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Montreal was a city on the verge of a nervous breakdown in the weeks before the 1976 Olympics.

The Olympic Stadium tower and retractable roof wouldn’t go up for years, but it looked like competition facilities would be completed on time. The Games would go on. Excitement was building.

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But so many things were going wrong.

At the vast east-end Olympic Park, chaos reigned. Construction workers were sabotaging the work site and working to rule, hoping to use their leverage to squeeze higher wages out of Quebec.

Fraud, collusion and corruption allegations were flying. There were growing calls for an investigation into enormous cost overruns.

Some Montrealers complained the city was an armed camp.

Soldiers patrolled airports, X-ray machines hummed in hotel lobbies, military helicopters buzzed overhead. Officials feared terrorists would target Montreal as they had the Munich Games four years earlier, when Palestinian terrorists murdered 11 members of Israel’s team.

Political turmoil was rife.

Pierre Trudeau, prime minister at the time, was threatening to bar Taiwan from the Games, angering the United States and other countries. Dozens of African, Arab and Caribbean countries were warning of aboycott if New Zealand were allowedto compete, pointing to its rugby team’s tour of apartheid South Africa.