A Grand Prix this year doesn't make any sense

Added price tag of $6 million to compensate for lack of spectators would be better spent on museums

I remember first hearing of Azerbaijan back in 1990, when I read headlines about the Nagorno-karabakh conflict with Armenia. For weeks, maybe months, Canadian correspondents joined international ones reporting from Baku, Azerbaijan's capital.

Over the years, I've not kept up with events in the former Soviet republic, at least, not enough. But when I found out in 2017 that Azerbaijan was to hold its first Formula One Grand Prix, one of only 32 countries to do so, I marvelled. Good for Baku, I thought. It's back in the news, but as host of a prestigious international event, not the scene of conflict.

Maybe Baku needed the race to update its international image. Maybe Kigali would be the kind of city that would also need a Grand Prix, as an added symbol to the already existing ones, that would prove — mostly to non-rwandans — that the country had healed some of the wounds of the genocide that took place there in the 1990s.

But New York, even after the Sept. 11 tragedy, doesn't need such a symbol. Neither does a post-november-2015-attacks Paris. Neither hosts a Grand Prix.

What is it that Montreal is trying to prove, during a pandemic?

Mayor Valérie Plante is favourable to the hallmark event returning on June 13, the date circled on the calendar by the race's organizers. Quebec's public health director, Horacio Arruda, so far hasn't ruled it out; it was cancelled last year, for obvious reasons. There is talk of the creation of a bubble for the estimated 1,300 people it takes to put on the race, most of whom would arrive from out of town.

But the event would come with an additional price tag of $6 million. The Formula One consortium seeks that amount from our governments as compensation for the loss of revenue that would result from the race being held on a closed track, without the public. That Lee Majors of an amount would be added to the sums already usually provided to make the race happen.

I like having a Grand Prix in Montreal and have been to the race more than once. I've enjoyed attending some of the associated charitable fundraising events. Besides the frenzy for some and headaches for others that the race brings to the city, I'm sensitive to the profitable trickle-down effect it has on a tourism ecosystem that includes the taxi and hospitality industries.

But with its track closed to the public and a quarantine that would deter international visitors, how many more people — beyond the race's entourage of 1,300 — could we really expect in our hotels? In our taxis? How many would rush to our restaurants' takeout options?

If our governments have $6 million to spare, may I suggest it go to our city's museums? During our pandemic confinements, what we've collectively been yearning for is to visit these important cultural centres, not to see very fast cars.

The dollar amounts the Grand Prix brings to Montreal has often been contested and is tangled in intangibles, such as international visibility.

But when it comes to Montreal's museums, here's an important and incontestable number: in non-pandemic times, more than 500,000 visits are made annually. Montrealers have flocked to see the Christian Dior exhibition at the Mccord museum and the Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the first international retrospective devoted to the famous French designer. Some of our locally produced exhibitions have toured around the world, from New York, to Copenhagen to Melbourne to Seoul, the accompanying international media coverage shining a spotlight on Montreal. How about that for international visibility? But for such magic to continue to happen, our museums will need sustained financial aid.

Yes to the Grand Prix, but not this year. And for those itching for Formula One action, the Azerbaijan edition will be on television next June 6.