Among many bizarre ideas, Drapeau once proposed having the Eiffel Tower dismantled and re-erected in Montreal for the duration of Expo 67.
"The Olympics can no more have a deficit than a man can have a baby." declared Mayor Drapeau in 1973. Monsieur Drapeau is gone, but Montreal's debt lingers on, scheduled to be fully paid off in 2002 - 26 years after the Montreal Games. Symbolic of the screw-up was "The Big O" a.k.a. "The Big Owe", the now-crumbling Olympic stadium, projected at $200 million and eventually brought in at $1billion - without a roof.
Political cartoonists had a field day with the image of an immensely pregnant Jean Drapeau waddling about for many years after the Olympics, and it was only with his death in 1999 that ribald jokes about the ex-mayor's pregnancy finally stopped.