Beyond the Games – Montreal’s Olympic Story
McCord Stewart Museum
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Chapters

Life in the Olympic Village

Hosting the Games also means providing comfortable accommodations for thousands of athletes so they can perform at their best on competition day! Nicknamed the “Pyramids” for its unusual shape, the Olympic Village complex could house 11,000 people. In addition to the residents, it had a staff of 5,000, most of whom were students.

The Village complex also included a disco, hair salon, swimming pool, movie theatre, performance space, rooms for interviews and conferences, a space for religious and spiritual activities, a First Nations craft shop, a flea market where athletes could trade objects, and an open-air theatre where jazz musician Oscar Peterson and the Grands Ballets Canadiens dance company performed.

Image details — In front of the pyramid-shaped buildings of the Montreal Olympic Village, an outdoor terrace is full of little round white tables equipped with yellow chairs and closed umbrellas. Red geraniums and shrubs are planted in a decorative bed in the foreground. Image details — In black and white, a dentist holds a dental instrument over a reclined man with his mouth open, illuminated by a bright lamp. The dentist and a woman assisting him look intently off to the side, in the same direction. Image details — In the disco, numerous little round tables with wooden chairs are set up around a dance floor. The tables are covered in white tablecloths with ashtrays in the middle. There are stacks of red plastic Coca-Cola crates. Image details — Several athletes wearing green clothing adorned with the South Korean flag are exchanging pins with a man who is smoking. Image details — With the tall pyramids of the Olympic Village rising up behind them, five men and women in bathing suits are stretched out on yellow lounge chairs set up on a lawn. Some are dozing, while others are reading. Image details — In a large room with pale yellow walls in the Montreal Olympic Village, a number of casually dressed people are playing pool. Five tables are spread out around the room and several games are underway. Image details — In black and white, eight beauty salon chairs with dryer hoods are lined up in an empty salon with a checkerboard floor. Two mirrors hang on the back wall, covered in forest wallpaper.
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The cafeteria was open 24 hours a day and could serve up to 96 people a minute! The Village was also accessible to members of the public, who could come to meet their idols and ask for autographs.

Olympic athletes are traditionally housed near the primary competition sites. The Pyramids could not have been any closer: they are right across the street from the Olympic Stadium!

The Mayor of the Olympic Village

Yvan Dubois, the Mayor of the Olympic Village, is very proud of how Montreal welcomed athletes in 1976. Already active in the sports milieu, he had attended the Munich Games to observe how the Olympic Village was run. He notes that Montreal introduced several new features. For example, three sections of the athletes’ residences were for both men and women, while the fourth was reserved for women, and the cafeteria was designed as a place to meet people and discover new foods as it offered meals with an international flavour.

A former baseball player, Dubois is the founder of Edphy, a nature centre and summer camp. He was also one of the first graduates of Université de Montréal’s physical and recreational education program. Let’s just say he’s very involved in sports!

Image details — A series of six numbered photographs, flanked by black perforated film edges, are laid out in three columns of two pictures each. Each one is slightly different from the others, but all show Yvan Dubois, the Director General and Mayor of the Olympic Village. Wearing a light grey suit and dark grey tie, he smiles as he sits on a low concrete wall in front of the pyramid-shaped buildings of the Village.
Yvan Dubois, August 11, 1976

My only goal was to contribute to the development of physical education in Quebec.

― Yvan Dubois