A saga that probably would have amused, rather than annoyed the creator of the likes of Solomon Gursky came to a satisfying conclusion on March 12 when the City of Montreal at last found a fitting way to immortalize one of its most illustrious sons.
Writer Mordecai Richler was posthumously declared an honorary citizen of Montreal – where he was born in 1931 and died in 2001 – by Mayor Denis Coderre, who called him “an outstanding cultural ambassador.” It was also announced, as expected, that Bibliothèque du Mile End, the public library on Park Avenue, is being renamed Bibliothèque Mordecai-Richler.
Richler’s widow Florence and sons Noah and Jacob, who in recent weeks have expressed frustration and disappointment with the city’s foot-dragging, are happy with the choice.
“How proud Mordecai would have been,” said the gracious Florence. “I’m so elated; it’s so apt, isn’t it?”
More apt, almost everyone agrees, than the renaming for Richler of the dilapidated gazebo in Jeanne Mance Park, on Mount Royal’s eastern slope, which the previous Gérald Tremblay administration had proposed in 2011, the 10th anniversary of the author’s death.
“We are profoundly grateful,” said Jacob. “It [the library] is a far more elegant solution,” adding that he is thankful this has happened in his 85-year-old mother’s lifetime.
The gazebo project was to have been completed in 2012, but to this day no work has begun on the structure that dates back to 1928. Coderre said it will be renovated this summer, but without the Richler tag.
While paying homage to Richler, neither Coderre nor Luc Ferrandez, opposition leader at city hall and Plateau Mont-Royal borough mayor, ignored that fact that Richler remains a controversial, if not reviled, figure. Jacob observed that even some city councillors today are opposed to this tribute.
Nationalists, who perceived Richler as anti-Quebec, were fiercely opposed to any honour for him when the idea was championed by Coun. Marvin Rotrand in 201l. Plateau borough officials were also against naming anything for him at the time, even though Richler made his childhood neighbourhood world famous.
As Coderre said, Richler was uncompromising in speaking his mind, whether it was about francophone Quebecers or his own Jewish community. “He saw challenging the established order as part of his job as a writer.”
In addition to his artistic merit, the citation of honorary citizenship speaks to Richler’s prickly politics: “Criticism was a key element in the writing of this purposefully provocative polemicist, who never shied away from controversy.”
No one, however, denies Richler’s deep attachment to Montreal, which he returned to in the early 1970s after living in London for 20 years.
“Make no mistake,” said Jacob, “my father loved this city, foibles and all, and perhaps because of its foibles…He was committed to getting Montreal exactly right, and that is why he came back to it.”
His credo was that “painful truths” should be aired and not allowed to fester under the surface, Jacob said. Noah thinks if he were alive today his father would speak out against the prejudice directed at Muslims.
Ferrandez noted how characteristic it is of Montreal’s sophistication that a predominantly French library in a former Anglican church be named for a Jewish writer, who grew up in the district.
Richler, he said, abhorred “small-mindedness and provincialism” and that is “why he took such shots, swinging in all directions, and almost always hitting the mark…
“No matter how complicated his relationship with Montreal and Quebec was, he was always of it.”
Michael Levine, Richler’s literary executor, said the writer disliked hypocrisy and xenophobia, and “always spoke truth to power.”
However, Levine admitted their relationship began as an adversarial one.
Levine was the lawyer of a person who wanted to sue Richler for one of his works, but as soon as Levine met the defendant he was thoroughly charmed.
“I became Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote.
“When he died, we faced a dilemma because this country has a tradition of burying its authors and forgetting them.”
Montreal’s homage is the beginning of a series of artistic projects and activities over the coming year to commemorate Richler, in which Levine has had a hand.
Among them are a reissue of French translations of five Richler novels by Edition du Boréale starting with Solomon Gursky (originally Solomon Gursky Was Here) this month; a new musical adaptation of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, featuring a score by eight-time Oscar-winning composer Alan Menken, in June, and audiobooks of his novels recorded by leading Canadian actors like Colm Feore and Martha Henry. There’ll even be a Mordecai Richler snooker tournament in Montreal later this year.
