The Olympic Games in a French-speaking city start this week. 

I’ve been there, seen that.

Maybe the oddest of many strange things at the 1976 Olympics (which I covered in Montreal, where I lived and worked), was seeing Queen Elizabeth, of all people, booed during the opening ceremonies. This was possibly the first — and only — time this ever happened in public to the dowdy, beloved monarch. 

Why? The Opening Ceremonies were held at the Stade Olympique, located in the east, predominantly French-speaking, end of Montreal. Mayor Jean Drapeau placed them away from the English-speaking west end of Montreal. Many Montreal anglophones had long refused to learn or even speak French. That did not endear them to Quebec province’s majority francophones. I’d moved to Montreal because I spoke and loved French. 

Monsieur Le Maire (Drapeau), embarrassingly, couldn’t get the Olympic stadium finished in time for the Games. The roof is still not fini. 

Violence and killing had broken out six years before the Games, a Canadian rarity fueled by French separatists who wanted Québec to declare independence and leave Canada. Separatist referendums, later, were barely defeated. 

 Then French President Charles deGaulle hadn’t helped things by standing on a balcony at Montreal’s City Hall and proclaiming “Vive le Québec Libre!” (“Long Live Free Quebec!”) 

Bilingual Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau (father of current PM Justin Trudeau) declared martial law after the British trade ambassador was kidnapped by separatist terrorists and Québec’s provincial Labor Minister was abducted and killed, the first time anything like that had happened in Canada. 

In my first week as a staffer at the Montreal Gazette, federal troops had surrounded our newspaper building … presumably to protect us English-speaking journalists. I was a newcomer to Canada, and my Canadian coworkers apologized nonstop, telling me, “This has never happened before.”

Which was true.

The ‘76 Olympics, a bit later, also had a militarized feel, with Canadian army helicopters on patrol. This was the first Olympics after the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, when terrorists killed 11 Israeli athletes. 

Unfortunately, Montreal 1976 became the first and only Olympics in which the host nation did not win a single gold medal.

I got a call from an editor at a U.S. national magazine chain just before the ‘76 Olympics, asking if I’d like to interview a then-unknown Romanian gymnast named Nadia Comaneci. I declined. Cluelessly, I wanted to go to our country place an hour outside Montreal and smoke dope with my budd.

Ergo,  I missed meeting the Olympics’ first perfect-10 performer. 

The male star of those Olympics was decathlon gold medalist was Bruce Jenner, who has subsequently and famously switched pronouns. 

But the image from the Montreal Games that’s stuck with me the most was seeing several female members of the dominant East German women’s swimming team, on Le Metro (subway). 

They were androgynous, more so than anyone I’d seen before: Tall, ghostly white, bemuscled, unsmiling, robotic. I wasn’t even sure they were female.

These were the faces of the forced-doping regime of East Germany. Hepatitis, heart disease, and liver cancer were suffered by many of these German women injected with synthetic testosterone. Some had children with birth defects.

But East Germany struck gold in these rampant-performance-enhancing-drug Olympic Games. (Although attempted Olympic doping is still going on, of course.) 

Still and all, I must say this week, “Vive La France!” I only hope these French Olympics go better than the last ones. 

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Please Say It’s So: Speaking of matters athletic, our Mountain View pool is scheduled to reopen after weeks of extensive repairs later this week. Please say it is so, PT city workers and management! Sequim is fine for Costco, but it’s been a real pain for those of us who’ve been going there the past month to use the YMCA pool.  

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Bonehead Alert: Why some jerks with far too much time on their hands would deface or destroy those charming little free libraries around town is beyond me. If you see these clueless  anti-literacy squads in destructive action, please do call the cops — so they can, so to speak, throw the book at them. 

PT humorist Bill Mann also did a bilingual radio show in Montreal, but his French fluency is now fini. (Newsmann9@gmail.com)