Inside abandoned $1.6bn stadium built to host Olympics which became home to hundreds of asylum seekers
MONTREAL's Olympic Stadium is one of the most striking and expensive sporting venues ever built.
The Quebec behemoth dominates the city skyline and was constructed to host the 1976 Olympic Games.
Featuring an unusual shell-shaped dome, the structure is accompanied by a 175-meter-high tower.
Known affectionately as The Big O, the stadium has a maximum capacity of 66,308, making it the biggest sporting venue in Canada.
It cost more than $1.6billion to build, with the Quebec government introducing a tobacco tax in 1976 to help fund the project.
The stadium wasn't fully paid off until 2006, more than three decades since ground was first broken.
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After successfully hosting the Olympics, the venue installed artificial grass and moved in the city's baseball and football teams.
MLB team the Expos played there until 2004, but relocated to Washington D.C. to become the Nationals.
Ever since, the giant venue has been without a main tenant, but still hosts rock concerts, trade shows, and soccer matches.
Demolishing the stadium would cost between $500 million and $700 million, according to the Olympic Installations Board.
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And officials have since found ways of putting the huge space to good use.
In 2017, the stadium was converted into a welcome center for asylum seekers from the U.S.
It took just 24 hours to transform the venue from an abandoned sporting arena into a thriving hub of activity.
The center helped provide a space for asylum seekers to locate housing and complete important paperwork, before being moved into longer-term housing.
In 2021, the Olympic Stadium was used as a mass vaccination site during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A new roof was earmarked for the stadium in 2017, costing a cool $250million.
But those plans have since been shelved, despite the current structure being deemed "unsafe" by the Olympic Installations Board.
In 2017, the dilapidated Kevlar roof had accumulated more than 16,000 tears.
Local Mayor Pierre Lessard-Blais said in 2022: "We can't talk about the revival of Montreal's east end while abandoning the Olympic Stadium.
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"We now realize how complex it is to make up for an infrastructure that was poorly planned but [the stadium] must be maintained.
"It benefits the local population, the entirety of Quebec, and it is the third most important place for tourists to visit."
