Montreal's Murals #1

heroic15397 (62)in #mural • 8 years ago

Taking you along my picturesque trips between the painted walls of Montreal City.

Clicking on the links below the pictures will take you at the exact locations where they were taken.

Murals all have a story of their own, I'll try and share what I know.

Follow me!

Notice: like a good magician, sometimes murals tend do disappear for all kind of reasons. I'll mostly keep it to those people can still go and see on the street by themselves.

Some of these gone exceptions are still worth mentionning.

One I always had an appreciation for. Who doesn't love a good old prestidigitator?

It used to be here

The Old Brewery Mission is a shelter for the homeless.

It's the largest for:

men in the entire province of Quebec
women in the whole Canada
a private shelter in Canada

What you are looking at is the graffiti on the Marcelle et Jean Coutu Pavilion in Downtown Montreal.

Mission Old Brewery’s mural

Let's go a bit up north on the Mount Royal Avenue in Le Plateau-Mont-Royal and see what is of interest there.

The following are shown going eastward from Mount Royal.

This one is a bit strange, I have no idea who made it or what exactly it was meant to represent. Don't hesitate to share your thoughts on what this might be, your guesses are as good as mine. Could this be Homo sapiens and Earth with a tree growing out of its belly sitting back to back?

Mural on the corner of Rue Drolet & Avenue du Mont Royal E

Seems like a kind of robot, maybe a Transformer. It's never easy framing the entirety of a wide mural when you are inside a narrow street. Sometimes you have to choose between taking it all in one shot with a bad angle or capturing separate parts of the mural on multiple photos. Not to mention when a truck delivering chips is standing in your way!

Mural on the corner of Rue Chambord & Avenue du Mont Royal E

Sometimes when you want cars & trees out of the way, you also have to take 2, 3 or even 4 shots of the same art piece. It still can make for good photos but it doesn't do justice to the big picture the artist(s) was/were putting out. A disc jockey, a double bass player and a drummer as the celebration of music, that is what I see. For obstacle(s) reasons the singer was left out from my camera lens on that day.

Mural on the corner of Rue Garnier & Avenue du Mont Royal E

Historical murals are not always the prettiest but they often compensate in being rich in an educative way. Showing in the midst of a park where city folks go to enjoy some green for a change of all the concrete view, it's a call into the past for the ones who had first and foremost heard nature's voice.

The Great Peace of Montreal was signed in 1701 between forty First Nations of North America & New France as a peace treaty.

This is a gross generalization and can be much debated but according to Francis Parkman, a 19th century historian:

- Spanish civilization crushed the Indian; English civilization scorned and neglected him; French civilization embraced and cherished him.

See for yourself the treaty meant to bury the hatchet between the Iroquois League of Five Nations and the French:

An image of -> La Grande Paix de Montréal

I'll mention some of the things I see represented below:

The man standing on the podium is René Lévesque, the almost mythical figure of the Parti Québécois
The standard over the head of the guy with a mustache, glasses and raised fist, which is not one of the flags of Quebec also depicted, is the Patriote flag
On August 8, 1944, women voted for the first time in Quebec's provincial general election
The Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms was effective starting June 28, 1976
November 21, 1996 is the date of adoption at the National Assembly of Quebec for the Pay Equity Act

Mural at the Parc Compagnons-de-Saint-Laurent

Time to end with a disparate duo, very close one to the other. The first one you can watch standing on Saint Dominique Street, the second one you'll find on the same corner except from the viewpoint of Sainte Catherine Street.