MONTREAL — Work has finally been completed on the gazebo located in Mount Royal park to honour late gazebo-lover Mordecai Richler.
Richler ism of course, best known for cultivating the respect the freestanding structure commands in society today.
The project to transform a decaying bandstand into a gazebo was first conceived in 2011.
Réal Ménard, the executive committee member overseeing the project explained that the five-year timeline was absolutely necessary to show due respect to a gazebo enthusiast of Richler’s stature.
“Everything about this gazebo had to be just right,” he explained. “We of course consulted gazebos from his personal collection as references. Not to mention the sketchbooks he filled with pages and pages of gazebo illustrations.”
Similarly, Ménard explained that the $700,000 price tag is a tribute to a man who loved gazebos so dearly and would spare no cost on elaborate details or gratuitous size.
He spotted his first gazebo in a Chinese garden with his mother as a young boy. As documented in the biography on his life “Mordecai Richler: Gazebo Man”, he tugged on his mother’s coattails and cried “Mummy, mummy, what is that oddly-shaped house?” The rest is an all too well-known history.
Through his life, Richler hosted gatherings in his garden for other gazebo enthusiasts and gave talks on gazebos at events, famously coining the phrase “A gazebo is like a little house that you can see through”.
Later in life, he made many generous donations from his personal collection to home and garden shows across the country.
Whatever myriad uses the gazebo comes to see — Sunday picnics, band practices or just some teens coming down from rave drugs after a day at Piknic Electronic — we can be sure Mr. Richler will be looking down at this fitting tribute and thinking “Yes, rejoice in the sacred octagonal space that is the gazebo. Rejoice and be well.”
