One can easily imagine mordecai Richler sitting on a bar stool, cigar in one hand and a glass of Scotch in the other, having a good laugh at Montreal’s politicians and bureaucrats, who so badly bungled a tribute to him. Or taking to his trusty Smith Corona manual typewriter and mercilessly skewering them with his acerbic wit.

Richler died in 2001 at age 70, so his hometown fans had to chastise the City of Montreal as its snafu-plagued renovation of a gazebo in his honour turned into a farce.

Three years late and at twice the original estimated cost, the work was finally completed in September to zero fanfare. Embarrassed by the debacle, the city took days to confirm to reporters that the work was over.

But let’s start at the beginning.

After Richler’s death, some suggested that a street be renamed after him in the Mile End neighbourhood that he made famous in his books. The idea was quickly shot down. Many of Quebec’s francophones still bristle at the scorn he heaped on nationalists, language laws and Quebec society in general – and particularly his harsh pieces in The New Yorker magazine. Missing from the tirades against him was the fact that Richler was as vicious to anglophones and people of his Jewish faith.

In 2011, Montreal finally announced it had found a way to honour one of Canada’s pre-eminent novelists without ruffling too many feathers. The city would renovate a gazebo – a rusting, rotting, graffiti- covered structure built as a bandstand in 1928. A strange choice, with no connection to Richler, but the location was right: at the foot of Mount Royal, adjacent to his boyhood neighbourhood.

The $350,000 project would be ready in 2013, the city said. Both numbers in the previous sentence turned out to be fiction.

The original estimate was woefully incomplete. Analysis and removal of soil and archeological inspections weren’t included. Nor were the concrete footings the gazebo required. Nobody realized the gazebo featured lead paint; that added decontamination costs. Then, Quebec’s culture department got involved because the gazebo is a heritage structure; provincial officials ordered changes to the floor height, steel roof and lighting. On and on the modifications went, each setback causing further delays.

At one point, Mayor Denis Coderre vowed that the project would be completed in 2015: “Even if I have to go to the hardware store myself to do it.” That year came and went, and the project dragged on.

Of course, costs kept rising. The final tally: $771,000. For that much, you can buy a 1,000-square-foot, two-bedroom, two-bathroom condo in Westmount.

Although Montrealers grumbled about the delays and cost overruns, two other much cheaper, more appropriate tributes to Richler materialized.

Last year, a library in the neighbourhood he immortalized was renamed after Richler, a fitting tribute to a literary giant. In September, artists painted a likeness of Richler and some of his characters on a nearby three-storey building. Cost of the mural: $50,000 (and it took a mere 20 days to complete).

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