WATCH ABOVE: The gazebo in Mount-Royal dedicated to famed author Mordecai Richler is in shambles, and one resident is asking the mayor why nothing has been done. Global’s Paola Samuel reports.
MONTREAL – The gazebo in Mount-Royal dedicated to famed author Mordecai Richler is in shambles.
This comes months after Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre announced he would buy the tools to rebuild the structure himself if progress was not made.
The gazebo was promised a $300,000 renovation back in 2011 when it was officially named the Mordecai Richler Pavilion, commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Montreal writer’s death.
Leonard Smolash, a Dollard-Des-Ormeaux resident, said he is not pleased with the way the pavilion is looking.
“I walk by the gazebo very often and I can tell you that not a stitch of work has been done to it,” Smolash told Global News.
“So many tourists walk by there to get to the lookout and they’re seeing this eyesore.”
The pavilion is surrounded by a fence and a porta potty, the only changes that seem to have been made to the site.
“This gazebo has been sitting there for five months and someone had to speak up about it,” said Smolash, who pointed out Coderre was ready to take a jackhammer to a Canada Post concrete slab, but has yet to make a move to fix the gazebo.
“I don’t like the kind of politics built on promises that are not kept.”
After this article was posted, Coderre tweeted to Global News to say that something will be done.
There have been other tributes made to the novelist since 2011.
A reading room on the sixth floor of Concordia University’s J.W. McConnell Library Building at the downtown Sir George Williams campus was renamed the Mordecai Richler Reading room in 2013.
A library in the Mile End, the borough Richler grew up, honoured him this March.
He has also been named an honourable citizen by Coderre and Plateau-Mont-Royal borough Mayor Luc Ferrandez.
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