Another Montreal Problem

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32117, 13 October 1969, Page 8

Another Montreal Problem

(N.Z. Press Assn. —Copyright) TORONTO. The strike of Montreal’s policemen and firemen is another in a series of unhappy events that have beset Canada’s largest city in the two years since the end of its successful world’s fair, Expo 67, reports the New York Times News Service. Montreal's 2.5 million inhabitants have had little to cheer about in that perod, apart from the 1969 debut of the Expos as the first major league Baseball club outside the United States. As has probably every North American Government—municipal, state, provincial or federal—Montreal has had to cope with fiscal pressures related to inflation. Schools have been shut by disputes over teachers’ pay. Property taxes were raised abruptly last winter after revenues from a new lottery fell short of expectations.

The fiscal crisis culminated in a decision to discontinue the successor to Expo, Man and his world, after it drained ssm from the city’s treasury in 1968. Only federal and provincial help made it possible to reopen the fair in 1969. In part, the fiscal squeeze resulted from the heavy backlog of debt incurred to build Expo and related facilities, such as highways and a subway system. The poet-Expo decline in tourist spending and construction jobs sapped some of the city’s feeling of well-being. Coinciding with the decline was a surge of French Canadian nationalism. The movement’s roots lie deep in the history of French-speaking Quebec Province, but it may have more than coincidence that the intensification came after the visit to Montreal of President Charles de Gaulle in 1967. He electrified the province and horrified Ottawa by shouting “Long Live Free Quebec,” from Montreal’s City Hall. Demands rose for entrenching French as the oblige-

tory language of schools, including English-speaking McGill University, and business. Montreal's English-speaking community of about 750,000 became jittery. Old antagonisms between English and French, Protestant and Roman Catholic, reasserted themselves. Several big demonstrations, some marked by violence, occurred.

A series of mysterious bombings last winter, including one in the Montreal Stock Exchange, set the city on edge. Some were probably connected with private labour management disputes. Others, were probably the work of separatists.