First in a four-part series.
The idea of a métro on tires came from Paris.
The idea of the subway as a showcase for art and architecture came from Moscow.
But when the Montreal métro opened on Oct. 14, 1966, it was a uniquely local creation.
“I wouldn’t call it a Quebec product, or a Canadian product. I would call it a Montreal product. It was really done by Montrealers,” said Guy Legault, the city’s assistant director of urban planning during the first phase of métro construction from 1962-67.
Guy Legault, photographed in the Peel station, was the city’s assistant director of urban planning during the first phase of métro construction from 1962-67.
Fifty years after a million passengers filled the métro on its first weekend in operation — oohing and aahing over the cobalt blue trains and soaring stations with their colourful mosaics and stained-glass — Legault’s passion for the underground transit system he helped create is undiminished.
“The métro is the most beautiful example of an urban institution. The métro glorifies the city. It’s a gathering place. It’s a place where people come together. The métro is extraordinary,” said Legault, 84, who oversaw the architectural plans for the initial network.
Widely regarded as the greatest achievement of Mayor Jean Drapeau’s 30-year reign (from 1954 to 1957 and 1960 to 1986), the rubber-wheeled subway has become an indispensable feature of the city it has transformed in myriad and profound ways.
Nov. 3, 1960: Marcel Piché, president of the Société d’expansion métropolitain, which offered to build a noiseless subway in Montreal, points to rubber-wheel assembly of the proposed cars. From left: company directors Pierre Perriau, Bernard De Massy, and H.J. O’Connell.
“It’s difficult to even conceive of what we would be like if the métro had never been built,” says Matthew McLauchlin, creator of the website metrodemontreal.com.
A court interpreter and social work student, McLauchlin, 34, launched his website on the métro on Oct. 14, 2001 — his birthday as well as that of the subway.
“I think that there’s something about a métro system that really puts it at the heart of the experience of any city,” said McLauchlin.
“It’s really striking to me that so much attention had been paid to the esthetics of something that so many people use every day,” he said.
“I was also struck by how much of it went unperceived and so my website always has been an effort to get people to take a second look and really appreciate what they pass by every day,” McLauchlin added.
July 1966: McGill métro station under construction.
October 2016: McGill métro station as it looks today, with murals by Nicolas Sollogoub titled Montreal Scenes Circa 1830.
The métro reshaped and reinvigorated downtown Montreal, breathing new life into public transit in an era when the car was king.
It led to the 32-kilometre underground city, where Montrealers shop and stroll, sheltered from cold and blizzards.
As hard as it might be to believe today, in a city notorious for corruption and construction delays, it was built economically and remarkably quickly — coming in on time and on budget. At $213 million ($1.6 billion in today’s dollars), the initial 26-station subway was one of the world’s least expensive to build, mainly because of its narrow-gauge trains, which allowed smaller tunnels.
And it did all that with an elegance and savoir faire that elevated a utilitarian means of transportation to a work of art.
“The French-English difference? Here it is,” raved Canadian Magazine, then a weekend supplement in the Montreal Gazette and other newspapers, praising the stylishness that set the métro apart from the Toronto subway, whose stations looked like “big, sterile ‘bathrooms.’”
“The Montreal metro is a subway with a difference, featuring among other things rubber-tired blue coaches and wild mosaic stations of which no two are alike,” reported United Press International.
“An unexpected malady” swept the city in the week after the métro opened, Canadian Press wrote.
“It’s Metro Love or ‘l’amour immodéré du Métro,’ as a Montreal Transportation Commission official calls it,” said CP, reporting on the capacity crowds milling in the new subway.
The original, 26-station métro network
While cities like Stockholm and Lisbon are renowned today for their stunning subways, Montreal led the western world in making the métro an architectural showcase. At the time, only the Soviet Union, where Moscow’s magnificent subway stations are veritable palaces of the people, had taken such a decorative approach. “We were among the first to conceive of the entire station as an esthetic experience,” McLauchlin said.
Front page of the Montreal Gazette the day after the métro opened on Oct. 14, 1966.
Half a century later, the distinctive architecture of each station remains Legault’s proudest achievement. As second-in command to then-urban planning director Claude Robillard, it was he who came up with the idea of a different architect to design each station (with some doing two or more widely separated stops).
“Bringing in architecture was a mark of progress,” Legault says.
“We were no longer provincial people. We weren’t people who patted ourselves on the back just because we were able to move earth and rock. We had taken it up a notch.”
When Drapeau and his right-hand man, Lucien Saulnier, were elected on Oct. 24, 1960, plans for a subway had been on the drawing board for more than 50 years.
The flamboyant Drapeau, for whom no grandiose vision was too extravagant, and the practical, efficient Saulnier were the dream team that would finally turn the proposal into reality.
“Saulnier made all the difference and reined in the unbridled enthusiasm of Mayor Drapeau,” Legault said.
Contrary to popular opinion, Saulnier, not Drapeau, was the father of the métro, he said.
“There are some urban legends about the métro that have to be cleared up. In fact, we owe the métro not to Jean Drapeau, but to Lucien Saulnier,” he said.
From left: businessman Lucien Saulnier, the mayor’s right-hand man and chief proponent for the métro project; Lucien L’Allier, the city’s public-works director; and mayor Jean Drapeau on March 16, 1963.
Enamoured with glamorous projects that would put the city on the world map, Drapeau was initially reluctant to commit to the métro. He was an ardent proponent of freeways, seeing public transportation — including tramways, which had been eliminated from Montreal’s streets by 1959 — as a relic of the past. But Saulnier, a small businessman raised in the Villeray district, was a firm believer in public transit. He had agreed to become Drapeau’s running mate in the 1960 election on the condition they build a subway if elected, Legault said.
“There’s no doubt that when the métro project became popular, Drapeau, who never missed an opportunity, rallied behind it and became its promoter. People think it was Drapeau’s idea, but that’s wrong,” he said.
Mayor Jean Drapeau proudly promotes Expo 67.
Another popular myth is that the métro was built because of Expo 67, Legault said.
In fact, construction of the métro was already underway when Montreal was awarded the 1967 world’s fair in late 1962, after Moscow backed out.
However, Expo did affect the plans, eliminating a line that would have run under Mount Royal to Cartierville and Montreal North and adding the yellow line to Île Ste-Hélène and Longueuil.
Construction started on May 23, 1962. The initial network — nearly 40 per cent of today’s 68 stations — was completed within five years, in time for Expo.
Your helpful guide to riding the métro in 1967.
The métro was ideally suited to the city’s densely populated neighbourhoods, built before the advent of the car, Legault said.
“To build a subway, you need a certain population density,” he said.
“Montreal is one of the rare cities in North America that has a very high population density (in the centre), ” he added.
“The métro is not a type of construction you can easily do in a suburb.”
Saulnier was a meticulous manager who kept costs under control, Legault said. “It was expertly managed. The construction of the métro was carried out on schedule and within the budget — something that no longer exists in Montreal,” he said.
While it cost $1.6 billion in today’s dollars to build the initial network, the STM paid $1.2 billion for 468 new AZUR métro cars, and is spending another $1.2 billion to adapt the métro system for them.
For know-how, rather than turning to the United States or Toronto — which had opened its subway in 1954 and had 38 stations by 1966 — Drapeau looked to Paris, whose métro had recently pioneered trains that ran on tires instead of noisy steel wheels.
“I think that in Drapeau’s mind, the idea was to seek out expertise in old Europe, where they have experiences and a culture that are different from the Americans’,” Legault said.
While the mayor’s preference for French expertise would later end disastrously when he hired architect Roger Taillibert to design the Olympic Stadium, a white elephant that left taxpayers saddled with a $1.5-billion debt, the idea of a métro on tires was a winner.
Montreal saved on tunnelling costs because the métro’s narrow-gauge cars could run in a smaller tunnel that didn’t require support beams between tracks, and could handle steeper grades than traditional steel rails.
Construction of métro tunnel on Berri St, north of Roy St., in 1964. Tunnelling, instead of digging, left neighbourhoods intact.
Construction of Bonaventure métro station and Marriott hotel in 1965.
By tunnelling underground instead of digging trenches for the métro as in Toronto, planners were able to leave densely populated inner-city neighbourhoods intact, Legault noted.
Instead of running subway lines directly underneath major commercial arteries like Ste-Catherine and St-Denis Sts., they were located a block away to avoid disrupting businesses.
“It would have destroyed Ste-Catherine St. (to build the métro directly underneath),” Legault said.
Thus, the Green Line runs under de Maisonneuve Blvd. — a street created in 1966 by joining Western, St-Luc, Burnside, part of Ontario and de Montigny Sts. — while the Orange Line runs under Berri St.
While subways in other cities exit to the sidewalk, that wasn’t an option in Montreal because the sidewalks are narrower and the weather is worse, Legault said.
Modernistic métro entrances, or “édicules,” became a familiar part of Montreal’s streetscapes. In the downtown core, métro stations sparked highrise construction, as buildings were added atop them.
The underground city is another by-product of the métro — one that planners foresaw and promoted, Legault said. The push to connect major downtown buildings by underground passages coincided with the opening of Place Ville Marie in 1962 — whose underground shopping mall was the city’s first. “To connect that to the métro was Nirvana,” he said.
Today, with no new métro construction since 2007, when the subway was extended to Laval, it’s hard to conceive of planning and executing a project of such magnitude as the métro in just six years. Part of what made it possible then is that fewer players were involved, said Benoit Clairoux, a historian at the Société de transport de Montréal (STM) and author of Le Métro de Montréal: 35 ans déjà (Hurtubise, 2001).
“At the time, it was incredibly simple. The city of Montreal decided to build a métro, one that would be almost exclusively on its territory, and that it would pay for itself, in theory, anyway. (Westmount helped pay for Atwater Station and the Quebec government paid for later extensions.) When you’re the one who’s doing the building, you’re the one who decides and you’re the one who pays, it goes fast,” he said.
Modern-day Préfontaine station. In the 1970s, expansion plans degenerated into decades of political bickering, funding shortfalls and stalled extensions.
But the story of the métro is an unfinished one whose early promise may never be fulfilled, said Dale Gilbert, a métro historian and post-doctoral fellow at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique’s Centre Urbanisation Culture Société.
Designed for a densely settled city, which managed the original construction in-house, it is a mode of transportation ill suited to and prohibitively expensive for sprawling suburbs, which grew exponentially during and after the period after the métro opened.
“In the beginning, Jean Drapeau was in control. He paid 100 per cent of the costs and in his mind, it was a métro for Montreal, for Montrealers,” Gilbert said.
General information and map, 1967. Today, it’s hard to conceive of planning and executing a project of such magnitude as the métro in just six years.
In the 1970s, expansion plans degenerated into decades of political bickering, funding shortfalls and stalled extensions. Métro extensions became controversial as costs exploded and different municipalities and levels of government got involved.
Accusations flew that Montreal’s métro-on-tires had been a poor choice because it cannot run above ground, a cheaper way to serve a sprawling metropolitan region. Montreal’s regional transit authority butted heads with the Quebec government over a proposed métro extension to Mirabel airport — leading to a deadlock that caused the government to declare a moratorium on future métro expansion in 1976.
Fifty years after the métro opened, it still fails to reach wide swaths of the city it was designed to unite, including Montreal North and much of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce.
Mayor Denis Coderre addresses a news conference in April on the planned light-rail project to link downtown with Trudeau airport, the West Island and South Shore.
A $5.5-billion private-public light-rail project for the Montreal region currently proposed by Quebec’s pension fund, the Caisse de dépôt et de placement, would not be well integrated with the métro, connecting only at Central Station, a 10-minute walk to Bonaventure métro, noted Craig Townsend, an associate professor in the Department of Geography, Planning and Environment at Concordia University.
Without political will from the Quebec government, there is little hope for improvement, Gilbert said.
“The explosion of costs, moratoriums and the provincial government’s hesitation all contributed to the fact that today we find ourselves with a métro system that never realized its full potential. ”
Who’s who: Mini-biographies of four key players
The partnership between mayor Jean Drapeau and his right-hand man, Lucien Saulnier, and the hand-in-glove teamwork by managers, architects and engineers in the city’s urban planning and public works departments were vital to the success of the immense project of building the métro. Here are four key figures who made that collaboration happen.
JEAN DRAPEAU
Jean Drapeau, the 38th mayor of Montreal, was elected for an unprecedented eight terms.
The Montreal of today is unimaginable without Monsieur le maire, Jean Drapeau (1916-1999).
Elected for an unprecedented eight terms, from 1954 to 1957 and 1960 to 1986, he is best remembered for Expo 67, the 1976 Olympics and the métro.
But Drapeau also presided over the transformation of downtown Montreal into a modern business district, destruction of Victorian-era neighbourhoods, vast highway projects, and the creation of the Old Montreal historic district.
A workaholic whose grandiose dreams for his city knew no bounds, he never lost his connection with the ordinary citizens with whom he grew up in the Rosemont district.
“There is only one thing the people would have held against me: banality, the commonplace,” Drapeau once said when asked about his mania for extravagant monuments like the problem-plagued Olympic Stadium.
LUCIEN SAULNIER
Lucien Saulnier, the city’s executive committee chairman, is considered the true father of the Montreal métro.
Lucien Saulnier (1917-1989), chairman of the city’s executive committee from 1960 to 1970, was the only manager ever able to rein in Drapeau’s extravagant visions.
Considered the true father of the métro, he was a lifelong resident of the working-class Villeray district, where he ran a men’s clothing store.
Saulnier was the steady hand on the tiller during construction of the subway and Expo 67, for which Drapeau insisted on building man-made islands in the St-Lawrence River instead of following planners’ recommendations for a waterfront site east of Old Montreal.
Saulnier did, however, talk Drapeau out of building a monorail instead of a métro, and constructing a giant tower on the Expo site.
Ousted from the executive committee in 1970, Saulnier was not around to check Drapeau’s excesses during the 1976 Olympics, which left taxpayers saddled with a $1.5-billion debt.
CLAUDE ROBILLARD
Claude Robillard became director of urban planning under the Drapeau-Saulnier administration.
An urbane, erudite Renaissance man who wrote children’s books and dabbled in theatre, engineer Claude Robillard (1911-1968) was Montreal’s visionary parks director from 1951 to 1960.
He created parks, playgrounds, wading pools, swimming pools, arenas and other facilities across the city, including Angrignon Park and the former Jardin des Merveilles zoo in Lafontaine Park, and was in charge of the construction of Place des Arts.
Robillard became director of urban planning under the Drapeau-Saulnier administration and was responsible for the entire plan for the métro, including the route, location of stations, architecture and design.
Robillard’s team also helped facilitate the birth of the underground city and integration of the métro into downtown Montreal, then being transformed by highrise landmarks like Place Ville Marie.
Robillard, who died at age 56 after a long illness, has a sports complex named after him. The Claude Robillard Centre in Ahuntsic was built for the 1976 Olympics.
LUCIEN L’ALLIER
Lucien L’Allier, the city’s public-works director, was a longtime friend and colleague of Robillard.
Electrical engineer Lucien L’Allier (1909-1978), who became the city’s public works director in 1954, was the chief engineer of the métro.
A distant man with a severe visual handicap, L’Allier was a longtime friend and colleague of Robillard, which facilitated an excellent working relationship between their two departments.
L’Allier brought in mining engineer Gérard Gascon (1922-2016), who later succeeded him as chief métro engineer, to take charge of tunnelling for the métro.
L’Allier later became chief engineer for the construction of Île Notre-Dame and the enlargement of Île Ste-Hélène for Expo 67.
He was also the first chairman of the Montreal Transit Commission and later of the Montreal Urban Community Transit Commission, created in 1970.
After L’Allier’s death, Drapeau renamed l’Aqueduc St., north of St-Jacques St., after him, as well as the métro station that bears his name.
Related
The métro at 50: A trip through the past of Montreal transit
The métro at 50: Building the network
For more about the Montreal métro
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