Montreal Hasn’t Quite Finished Pouring Money Into Long-Empty Olympic Stadium
Built for the 1976 Summer Games, the “Big O” is both an architectural landmark and a budget-busting bête noire to Quebec taxpayers. Now it needs a costly renovation.
Olympic Stadium, with its inclined tower at right, has long been a Montreal landmark.
Photographer: Roberto Machado Noa/LightRocketWhen Quebec’s government announced in February that it was planning to fix the roof of Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, it seemed, from an outsider’s point of view, an obvious plan. The stadium, built for the 1976 Summer Olympic Games, is an icon on the skyline of the Canadian city, and its decades-old fiberglass-and-Teflon roof is full of tears (about 20,000 to be exact). Quebec Tourism Minister Caroline Proulx told reporters in December that Taylor Swift would skip performing in Montreal during the Canadian leg of her Eras Tour this year because the stadium is in such poor shape.