Did Mayor Tremblay have his hand in the till?

The Charbonneau commission on construction fraud has led many to be outraged at our Mayor Tremblay, with howls for his resignation ringing out in points downtown and beyond.

   Let's walk through what we know about our mayor.

   What is Gerald Tremblay? An enigma.

   That’s a cop out, of course. It's an adjective used on all sorts of people: indeed that’s how Andre Pratte, former Premier Charest biographer described our longtime provincial leader but the premier filled out with time, becoming folksier and more laid back.

   But unlike his contemporary and co-Liberal Charest, Montreal’s Mayor never grew a homey streak, and still talks that same halting, high-pitched petulant nag-tone that he addressed me the first time we spoke.   

  Unlike his affable brother the former city councillor Marcel Tremblay, Mayor Tremblay, a recovering alcoholic, has always looked like he has a hard time kicking it into a happy gear.  

   He sits in his kitchen early Sunday mornings, just sitting staring into space as if in a catatonic trace, oblivious to his own growling stomach, lost in some sort of dream.

   Being miserable isn’t a bad thing though. We loved Drapeau who also a grump. Smart people don’t smile much anyway and when they do, it's in their hopefully-limited stupid moments.

   So why does Tremblay persist-- why didn't he retire long ago? Well one reason people in power don’t quit is because they feel like they’d let down their team. Most leaders aren't so heartless that they’d toss their professional clan members into orphanhood, so he really can't be faulted there.

  Is he honest? He looks it and most assume he is, but I'll relate my own experience further down.

  Tremblay was said to have done well in business (ie: he got lucky, as all successful business people did) before getting cultivated into politics as an MNA under Liberal Premier Robert Bourassa.

   Up in Quebec City Tremblay couldn't drink with the big boys, although he definitely tried. One story has it that he was once so drunk that he found himself driving on the lawn of the National Assembly. Possible exaggeration, but to his credit, he drives on the road now.  

   It's worth noting that Tremblay's party got in power largely by insinuating that his predecessor Mayor Pierre Bourque was dishonest and engaged in shady fund-raising.    

   Bourque, who reigned in a time of sweeping economic recovery, might have had the same shenanigans going on under his watch. I don't know. He asked me to run for his party as a city councillor once or twice, an offer I refused because I didn't feel it for him that strongly.

   Bourque, nicknamed for the vacant Being There protagonist Chauncy Gardner, was awkward in the way most Montreal mayors have been since Camillien Houde, who might have used up all of the bombast a century of successors. 

   The first time we spoke, Bourque couldn't look in my eyes, or anywhere near them. He was quite effeminate, and had adopted boy and girl and raised them on his own after his wife split. His dad famously jumped to his death off the Olympic Village, none of which I discussed with him personally.

   My only conversation with Mayor Tremblay was a brief but memorable affair that led me back to that same weirdness I had seen with Bourque. 

  Our brief exchange took place at the Jello bar just before Tremblay was elected mayor for the first time.

  I asked Tremblay whether, if elected, he would duplicate Bourque’s practice of donating his entire mayoral salary to the mayor’s fund to help start up businesses.

   Tremblay looked like I had just tossed a flaming shooter at his glasses.
   The gears in his brain leaped into action and that now-familiar squeaky outrage rose to his reddened face and he scolded me about the fact that he absolutely had a right to collect a salary for such a job. It was a massive overreaction and a barely-provoked fit of unnecessary petulance.   

   He turned and walked away but after about 10 seconds later he returned to me and graciously told me “but that was a good question though.”

   In the months following, I found myself at city councillor Marvin Rotrand’s house for a reason I don’t remember. (Marvin has always been very generous with me even though I once mocked him in print as ‘the combover king of NDG’ who was “running around showing off a clipping saying he’s the best councillor in town.”)

   Rotrand said that his Union Party was trying to get organized and I suggested that they get Frank Zampino on board as he seemed like a pretty bright guy as well.

   I didn't know much about Zampino except that as Mayor of St. Leonard he always returned my calls and generously answered all my questions.

  This was impressive because most mayors never returned my calls. Montreal North Mayor Yves Ryan, who had a much-hyped reputation as a call-returner, was the absolute worst, I must’ve called him 20 times without ever speaking to him once. Verdun's Mayor Claude Trudel never picked up a phone either. 

    Rotrand had never heard of Zampino but listened closely to my arguments to put him near the top. Soon after, Zampino was named second-in-command of the Tremblay administration.  

   And of course Zampino has long since left the post in a flurry of unfortunate allegations and criminal charges, which were worsened today by Lino Zambito’s testimony at the Charbonneau commission.  

   Near the end of his reign I saw Frank Zampino at a community function. He was clad in an expensive suit and had lost a ton of weight, thanks to bariatric surgery. He danced around the room giving everybody his back, in a waltz that made himself unapproachable by all.

  He then disappeared, the second-best disappearing act I’ve ever seen a politician pull off (the other was by MP Marlene Jennings when I asked her about complaints that Canada Post had failed to promote diversity in its Montreal workforce.)

     The Charbonneau commission has flipped over a rock teeming with creeping beasts, it has led to the inescapable conclusion that our corruption industry it bigger than depanneurs and has been since the dawn of time.  

    It has also led to a necessary examination on our nationalistic policy of keeping out-of-province competition out of the bidding process.

    But I think the underlying problem with Montreal, to quote something I heard at Pasta Casareccia a few days ago, is that – unlike other cities -- we don’t have anything close to a shared morality.

   What makes Montreal great, as Leonard Cohen once said, is its fractious ethnic diversity. All groups have forever competed to chisel out in their own glory, Jews, Francos, Anglos, Irish: every group has suspiciously competed and pushed hard to create something that would resonate in their own glory.

   But that’s also what makes Montreal terrible. Since the beginning Montreal city politics has strictly followed ethnic lines. Our city has always conducted what academics call ascriptive politics, meaning that each neighbourhood would elect one of their own to grab all he could get for that group, common good be damned.

   Montreal has long had the highest degree of voluntary segregation in the country, we cluster in our ethnic gangs and consider it legit, but I'm not sure it is.

   In another city there would be a sense of shame at blatantly trying to grab money from the till, but in a place where every group considers itself a victim, we are able to rationalize such crookedness for the sake of the group grab.

   The Mafia, after all, was born as a patriotic Sicilian resistance to the French who had taken over the land. So they are sort of like a FLQ with 300 years of evolution, they practice anti-state subversion by nature, they even feel justified. 

   Where do anglos stand in all of this? I like to think we are part of the solution, as we've been forced into a position of renouncing nationalistic tendencies, so I'd like to see us step up and show some leadership and guidance now that clear-thinking is needed.

   So finally: did Tremblay steal money?
   Like most, my gut reaction tells me no, but first impressions are very instructive and when I asked him about his intention to make money for himself from the job, it certainly looked like it hit a central nerve.

   And while it’s easy to assume the moral rectitude of someone with such a demeanor, I will ask you: have you ever carried $10,000 cash  -- a big, fat, ugly, vulgar wad of fifties and twenties and hundreds -- on you? 

   It’s a powerful feeling, a good feeling, you might find it easy to get used to.

   But then again, a politician has a long way to fall, a name and legacy forever tarnished for money he didn't even really need.

   So why risk it? Why be greedy when you have enough? I asked a friend who used to make $15 million per year why the rich were still hungry for more money. They look around the pool and they see guys making a bit more. “Hell I'm as good as that guy, I deserve as much as that bum.”