We have never been to an olympics. That’s maybe a common experience, but we have also never deliberately seen an olympics. We’ve caught, sure, highlights of elaborate ceremonies, seen runners running or divers diving by chance on an elevated TV in a bar someplace, but we’ve never thought “Let’s watch an olympics” and definitely never turned that thought into action.
The closest we’ve ever come to an olympics was attending a regional track and field event in high school where our entire class was carted off to either participate or “support” participants. Our “support” looked like sitting with friends on a patch of grass, being half-grateful to be out of school and half-resentful that our sitting there out of school was supervised and mandatory. We tore at the grass for hours, tried to find somewhere to smoke, wondered if escaping the confines of the fenced-in track area was viable or advisable, and whiled away the day as others - more athletic or at least more willing to humor high school athletics - hurled javeli, ran in ovals, etc.
Anyways, you might say that the olympics and track and field more broadly are pretty high up on the list of things we “know nothing at all about.” What else is high up on this list, you wonder? Architecture. We know that buildings exist. We know that they are designed, built out of materials like straw, sticks, brick, and are susceptible to damage by the huffing and puffing of wolves - but that’s about the extent of our knowledge. A friend of ours and their partner are both actually architects, but near as we can tell their training was largely comprised of building severe and angular little dollhouses that no well-adjusted doll would want to live in or be near for any amount of time. They do interesting and maybe even important things re: buildings, surely, but we are ignorant of what might make those things architecturally interesting or important.
So, with background knowledge and expertise like this, who better than us to visit Montreal’s Olympic Stadium and report on the experience?
Most stadiums don’t hold on to the name of the event for which they’re built. They get bought up by corporations and become something like the Dove Natural Beauty Bar Soap and Body Wash Arena or the Kelloggs Presents Blue Lightning Pop-Tarts Center. Not this place, though. As far as we know, it is and has always been simply The Olympic Stadium (or, colloquially, The Big O). It seems odd to us that a building that’s been standing for almost fifty years still carries the name of an event than lasted only - we’re guessing - a week? It was a baseball stadium for 27 years longer than it was an olympic stadium and, more importantly, it has been a stadium for nothing much at all in the last 19 years since the baseball team packed up and left us for DC in 2004.
Now, then, it is just a great big building called the olympic stadium. It is under perpetual construction and inspires occasional articles about the decades of debt the city incurred building it.
We weren’t alive until a good while after all the contracts were signed, the building built, and the financial fallout well underway. We were just raised here in the wake of these global games and the construction shenanigans that accompanied them. Even if we had been alive way back when we’re not sure anyone would have cared about our opinion that billions of dollars should have been spent on “literally anything else.” We’ve simply inherited this building and its history. And we have no idea what to think about or do with it other than stare and, even then, we rarely want to stare for long.
While we had no idea what we could possible say about this enormous extraterrestrial structure, we assumed that if we walked around for long enough we’d get some kind of idea. The building or its grounds would inspire a thought of some kind that might lead to an interesting or at least funny insight or two. But nothing came. This might, though, be part of what monumental architecture is up to. It makes it hard to consider anything other than it. We could summon little more than “It is very big” and “That tower is at an angle.” We weren’t awed or humbled by it exactly, but more just dumbed.
This feeling of being dumbed isn’t, to be sure, exclusive to the olympic stadium. The same empty-headedness comes over us whenever we’re near famous modern buildings - that fairly tall structure in Chicago, that skyscraper from the Warhol movie in NYC, etc. We tend to look for a little while, then want very much to do something other than just look. We’re not sure what the appropriate or expected reaction to these things might be. Taking pictures seems like the most common response, but - having done that - what?
Tours of the building are “indefinitely” halted, so we couldn’t go inside or up the tower. Moreover, it really didn’t seem like the building wanted us in or near it. The combination of uncannily organic curves paired with sharp lines and corners was not, funnily enough, very inviting. We tried to imagine what it was like in ‘76 when it was new and crowded with thousands and thousands of excited people, but this didn’t really help. They were there, we figured, for the events and the experience - for the discus hucking (?), the relay racing, the painting your face to look like a nation’s flag, and so on - and not the moulded concrete of a tall, imposing edifice.
There were, obviously, no events or anything happening when we visited, so we just circled the building and documented that circle. As with the last time we reported on the strangely post-apocalyptic aspects of our fair city, we saw very few people while wandering around. We crossed paths with the occasional dogwalker or jogger, but no one seemed to be hanging out despite it being a very nice day (for March in Montreal).
On our second lap around the building, we did though see something that - while technically not part of the stade - made us think something other than “Gee, this is definitely a building and sports happened in it long ago.”
It’s hard to tell with all the snow everywhere, but this is a skatepark. It sits at the foot of the stadium and, during summers, is noisy with people. Obviously, winter makes skateboarding unpossible - but we figured that it might be at least worth discussing how community organizers, a shoe corporation, the government, and a bunch of others decided to turn this vast, functionally empty space into something folks might actually want and use. We took the above picture kind of hastily and planned to get closer, explore the ramps and rails and whatever. But then we - to our surprise - saw movement. We saw people.
Our first thought was to go ask these out-of-place teens what they thought of the olympic stadium. They were, after all, sitting directly in front of it. We wanted to know if they, too, were dumbed by its massive size or iconic stature. But as we started off in their direction we quickly realized that they weren’t, urm, just chilling. They were, rather, “chilling.” Noticeably. From, like, hundreds of feet away. So, we turned quickly around and left them to themselves and the enormous public space that they had, through sheer indifference or force of will, decided was suitable for their endeavors.
Urban space tends always to be a negotiation between intention and actual use. Architects and planners and various other functionaries create a building or certain kind of urban space, then the people who live in or around that space do with it what they will or what they can. It was and is hard for us - often - to see beyond or through the intent of spaces. The Olympic Stadium so clearly wants to host thousands, was so obviously is built for specific organized events, that - in the absence of those events - we find ourselves shrugging at it. The same, then, holds true for all the other buildings we’ve seen. We tend only to see the intended use and limit our engagement accordingly. The pickle building in London is an office building and we have no businesses in offices, so we just keep on walking. We do park things in parks, walk on sidewalks, shop in shops, etc.
We forget or ignore the fact that desire and/or circumstance can lead to more creative uses of space, to transformations of that space into something one might want or need regardless of some far-off designer’s intent. There are anarchic possibilities in every space, but due to complacency or exhaustion or humbug or privilege we rarely find ourselves exploring or exploiting those possibilities. The world - and everything in it - can always be refashioned, can always be changed or altered to better or at least different ends. We are not stuck, figuratively or literally, with tremendous, empty buildings that are good for nothing and no one. It is possible to turn these spaces into something else, something that accords with what we want or need or hope to want or need.
We (thankfully) do not want or need to perch ourselves on a concrete ledge in very public to chill - but these two evidently do. We don’t and can’t know whether they do so out of circumstance or desire. It is nice, all the same, to see folks making space their own, making their environment accord with their lives (rather than the other way around). They have found a way to pursue certain activities that they could not pursue elsewhere. It might not be the place they wanted, but it’s a place they were able to create thanks to certain historical accidents and amenable present circumstances (e.g. lax security, nice weather, etc.). They’ve secured a (questionable) refuge for themselves.
An hour south of the Olympic Stadium, people with wants and needs beyond “chilling” in a skatepark on a nice day are being told that they cannot come and use this incredibly vast and mostly empty country for anything at all. The “irregular” US/Canada border crossings - like Roxham Road - have been closed and possibilities for asylum seekers further curtailed. Space might be what we make it, but - acting our behalf - this government has evidently decided that who counts as “we” ought to be policed with greater rigor.
This government measure is, as with most, as much about money as anything else. Imagine the cost of caring for and housing every person who tried to enter the country? It would probably cost tens of millions of dollars every year (like the current cost of maintaining the olympic stadium) and billions of dollars over the course of many years (like the cumulative cost of the olympic stadium and its grounds as a whole). And what would you have the government do, build “villages” to house people while they found their bearings and pursued their particular passions according to the very best of their abilities? Celebrate their arrival and the particularities of their cultures and heritages with some kind of a ceremony? Demonstrate on a global stage that a mutual and shared pursuit of certain ideals is not only possible, but viable and joyful? C’mon!
It would be crazy to host people from any and all nations guided by the belief that “a peaceful and better world” is possible by way of “mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity, and fair play” (like the Olympic Movement’s “Beyond the Games” statement of purpose suggests). It’s not like “the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity” (as the Olympic Charter puts it) could be enacted at every level of government everywhere in perpetuity.
Besides, a great majority of those people seeking asylum in Canada probably can’t synchronized swim at even a bronze medal level, so what good are they anyway?
But, again, we know nothing about sports or architecture - so maybe we’re out of our depth here. From our very ignorant perspective, the olympic stadium is very ugly and good for nothing and all people should be able to find refuge wherever they damn well please regardless of ability, circumstance, or anything else.
The only thing we know for sure, really, is that those teens were legit going at it in that skate park. Jeez. “Get a room!” Right?! Right?! Right.
Lol the Olympics charter
Oh! A twisty Roxham Road ending... Didn't see that coming. Beau travail in fitting that in.