Toronto Star

If James Cherry were to write its epitaph, he'd say this about Mirabel Airport: "It was a project that was doomed to fail." Cherry, president of Aéroports de Montréal, the non-profit authority that now runs both of this city's major landing strips, says Mirabel was likely destined to die an early death before it even opened its gates in 1975. "With the benefit of our hindsight, it was ill-conceived," he says. Today, the cavernous terminal is almost always empty, and seems haunted by the possibilities that were once envisioned here. In the glass cathedral of modernist architecture, you can still detect the magical momentum that gripped Montreal between Expo 67 and the 1976 Summer Olympics. But like the denuded Expo site and the soon-to-be Montreal Expos-less Olympic Stadium, the Mirabel terminal is a mere vestige of long-gone ambitions.