Workers in Japan demonstrate outside the big Hitachi electrical plant to
protest firing of Communist and other militant workers. The company

‘Wses what it calls a “fire brigade” of agents who police the plant and
workers’ dormitories and finger union activists.

4) §©Vancouver, B.C.

REPORT FROM BERLIN

JACK PHILLIPS
Who attended 9th congress
Socialist Unity Party, Germany
Saturday, July 10 — 8:30 p.m.
5422 Chambers, Vancouver
(near 38th — 1 Block East of Clarendon)

Slides—Pictures—Refreshments

COPE IS HAVING
A
GARDEN PARTY

at Ald. Harry Rankin’s
357 Hull St.

Sunday, June 11 — 2 p.m.
; Dinner at 4 p.m.
| Admission $2.50 0.A.P. $2.00

All welcome -

Unemployed $2.00
Bring your garden nai)

We will professionally look after
all your travel needs. We specialize
in tickets, tours, passports, permits

and reservations. Call us today—
for prompt personalized service.

_ 2679 E. Hastings St.,

253-1221

BOOK REVIEW

The folly of J. Drapeau

In May of 1970, Montreal’s
mayor Jean Drapeau, flushed with
the success of Expo 67, went to
Amsterdam and_ successfully
wooed the International Olympic
Committee with phrases of
adherence to the “Olympic ideals’’
and promises of a ‘‘modest
games.”’

When Montreal’s mayor talks in
such an unassuming manner, he
usually wants something — and on
this occasion he wanted his city to

be named as the site of the 1976 -

Olympic Games. Most observers
thought his chances pretty slim,
particularly as Quebec city had
just finished playing host to the
world with Expo and there were
two other major world centres —
Los Angeles and Moscow — bid-
ding for the games.

However, they had failed to
reckon with the pure cunning and
salesmanship of the small man
from Montreal and when the final
vote was announced, Montreal had
outpolled Moscow by a vote of 41-
28. Montreal was officially the site
of the 1976 summer Olympic
Games.

Unfortunately, that was the high
point of Montreal’s Olympic
history. In 1970 the Olympic Games
were going to cost the relatively
small amount of $124 million and
‘swouldn’t cost the taxpayers one
cent.’ Today, a mere two weeks
before the Games are to open the
cost has risen to a minimum of $1.4
billion and the taxpayers will be
left with a bill that is expected to
exceed $800 million.

In 1970, the Olympic Games were
going to provide thousands of badly
needed low-cost housing units for
the city of Montreal. In 1976 it has
become clear that there will be no
low-cost housing generated by the
Games, only 932 condominiums in
the $20,000 to $60,000 price range.

Through a combination of
mismanagement, bungling,
arrogance and plain corruption, all
dominated by visions of grandeur
of mayor and by pure greed by the
supporting characters, Jean
Drapeau’s “modest games’’ has
turned into a nightmarish Billion
Dollar Game, according to Nick
Auf der Maur, whose book by that
title has just appeared.

Auf der Maur is familiar with the
ways of Jean Drapeau, having
faced him from the council
chamber of Montreal City Hall as a
councillor from the civic opposition
Montreal Citizens Movement and

RANKIN

Cont'd from pg. 2

available for all people.

The building of a network of
hiking -trails throughout the
province would, at the same time,
provide hundreds of useful and
healthy jobs during the spring,
summer and fall.

BOLER TRAILER
TO RENT

CARL WARDER
534-2675

Beaver Transfer

Moving
* Packing
* Storage

790 Powell St.
Phone 254-3711

'

is the Olympic watchdog for that
organization. And watch he did as
the total games cost rose from $124
million to $250 million then $400-
million and upward to the latest
estimate of $1.4 billion and still
rising.

But in addition to watching, Auf
der Maur was doing a little digging
and has produced a 144-page book
which will startle even the most
hardened expert on civic politics.

Auf der Maur begins with Jean
Drapeau’s rise to power, and how it
was based on his leading role in the
Caron vice probe of the 1950’s.
Ironically, Drapeau’s legwork
uncovered incident after incident
of mismanagement of public funds
and evidence of widespread
corruption in the Montreal city
hall. It was on the strength of his
work that he won election as mayor
of Montreal.

That the career of the man who
would oversee the greatest
squandering of public funds in a
useless chase for self im-
mortalization was launched by his
own investigation of the same type
of corruption two decades earlier,
is only one of the many ironies
detailed in Billion Dollar Game.

Another is the story of the royal
yacht Britannia which isn’t
equipped with adequate sewage
treatment facilities to allow direct
discharge from its holding tanks
into the St. Lawrence River with
the result that the tanks will be
emptied onto a barge drawn
alongside and handled through the
city’s sewage facilities — only to be
dumped directly into the St.
Lawrence because Montreal’s
sewage treatment plant remains
unfinished because there is no
money available to complete it due
to the tremendous overrun in costs
for the Games facilities.

But the whole of Auf der Maur’s
book centres around Jean Drapeau
and his manic desire to construct a
suitable monument to his memory
— no matter what the cost.

Much as an earlier statesman
would hire a Hans Holbein to paint
his portrait, Jean Drapeau sought
out architect Roger Taillibert to
design his Olympic Park. And
Taillibert, thoroughly caught up in
the Drapeau Olympic spirit
produced a stunning result.
Together, Drapeau and Taillibert
have set out to construct a
monument to the mayor’s
memory, a monument which
Drapeau has at times equated to

the Egyptian pyramids or the
Eiffel Tower.

But like the pyramids, Auf der
Maur points out that the cost has
been prohibitive, including the loss
of 12 construction workers’ lives in
the mad dash to complete the
facilities by the July 17 opening
ceremonies. Through it all,
Drapeau has remained unmoved,
even when it is pointed out that one
of the hundreds of contracts
awarded during the games
facilities construction was ever
awarded following a public tender,
or that millions upon millions of
dollars have been raked off the top
by unscrupulous developers and
contractors.

Auf der Maur’s book is packed
with information, some of ‘it
humorous, but most of it
frightening in the sense that in a
city in which there are still 12,000
housing units without hot running
water, the mayor and his city
council would be willing to spend
over $5 million to construct a walk-
way from the Olympic Village to
the $650 million Olympic stadium.

Unfortunately, there are so
many figures, such vast sums of
money involved that after a while
the total effect becomes numbing.
The reader soon finds himself
unable to differentiate between the
$62 million spent on the velodrome
(bicycle racing track) and the $13
million spent on the aquatic centre.
I suppose that it is unavoidable, but
it is still a little hard to digest.

All in all, Auf der Maur has done
a fine job in researching his book,
probably due to his years as
Quebec editor of -Last Post
magazine and in many ways there
isn’t anger surrounding his book as
muchas there is a sense of sadness
that what may actually have been
a modest games had Drapeau
followed some common sense
guidelines has turned into the maze
of controversy and corruption that
it is today. ‘

Perhaps his most revealing
statement about the games is a
quote he draws from the mayor
himself who said: ‘‘The ugliness of
slums in which people live doesn’t
matter if we can make them stand
wide-eyed in admiration of works
of art they don’t understand.

Published in paperback. by
James Lorimer and Company, The
Billion Dollar Game is available
from the People’s Co-op Bookstore
in Vancouver at $3.95.

—Mike Gidora

CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING

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of rain picnic will be held in the
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Phone 254-3430.
NOTICE

ANYONE interested in playing
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RON SOSTAD, Writer-Researcher.

‘Ph. 922-6980.

MOVING? CLEANUP — Wanted
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COMING EVENTS

JULY 18 — FEDERATION of
RUSSIAN: CANADIANS —
Vancouver Branch ANNUAL
PICNIC, Sunday, July-18, 1976 at
12 Noon, Confederation Park,
North Burnaby. Games, food,
entertainment and raffle. In case

HALLS FOR RENT

RUSSIAN PEOPLE’S HOME —
Now available for rentals. For
reservations phone 254-3430.

WEBSTER’S CORNERS HALL —
Available for banquets,
meetings, etc. For rates: Ozzie,
325-4171 or 685-5836.

UKRAINIAN CANADIAN
CULTURAL CENTRE — 805
East Pender St., Vancouver 4.
Available for banquets, wed-
dings, meetings. Ph. 254-3436:

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JULY 2, 1976—Page 7