|
3 Wisemen | Trudeaumania
| October Crisis |
Bilingualism |
Petro Canada |
72 Super Series |
Wage & Price
Controls |
1976 Olympics |
PQ come to Power |
Interlude |
Western Alienation
| 1980 Referendum |
The Constitution |
Changing of the
Guard The awarding of the
1976 Olympics to Montreal was a major achievement for
the Canadian bid process which beat out both Los Angeles
and Moscow in the process. This was the first games that
Canada held and seemed to be a natural follow up to Expo
67 nine years earlier. This was a period of political
turmoil and change not just in Quebec, and Canada but
world wide. The 1972 Munich games had
exposed the games to terrorism and the 78 games
accelerated the process of politicizing the games and
commercializing the athletes and the process. Many
African nations demanded that New Zealand be banned from
the games because of it allowed it's rugby team to tour
apartheid South Africa, The IOC refused to do this which
led to the withdrawal of over 26 countries, most of
which were from Africa. The issue of the two China's
also flared up with Taiwan who decided to boycott the
games when they were not allowed to be called the
Republic of China.
One of the other
issues which really began to become apparent in the
Montreal games was the use of drugs and steroids by
athletes to improve their performance, in particular
many suspected the East German women who dominated the
swimming events.
The games themselves
produced 32 world records which represented over 6,000
participants from 92 countries.
Nadia Comăneci won 3 gold medals and for the first
time in Olympic competition scored a perfect 10 not only
once but 7 times. The music she used for one of her
performances became the unofficial theme music of the
games and was know as Nadia's theme.
The Quebec government built an
impressive venue for the games known as the Olympic Oval
which took on negative tones as the deficit for the
games began to grow and eventually reached $2 billion
dollars which was one of the largest loses for an Olympic
games ever. Canada also became the first nation to ever
host an Olympic games and not win at least 1 gold medal.
What had begun as a very positive
event which Canadians had hoped could recapture the
spirit of 67 became a controversial, debt ridden games
which was to leave a negative feeling among Quebecers
and the rest of Canada and did little to recapture that
fading feeling of federal nationalism.
|
