Last week I was in Montréal taking a bus to the Concordia University campus with instructions on how to find a hidden doorway. In other words, my vacation was going well.
The Montréal Signs Project is a kind of sign museum (and maybe a bit of a sign graveyard).
These signs were rescued from shuttered businesses and hung inside multiple floors of a couple of university buildings.
Matt Soar, founder of the Montréal Signs Project, emailed me instructions on how to locate the signs.
Some signs are inside the stairwell.
There are labels for the signs, many with pictures showing where the signs came from or with the proprietors of those businesses.
The instructions said I was welcome to gently touch the signs, but you know I worked in a museum for 25 years and it will always be taboo for me to touch the art.
Because of course, these signs are art.
The information directed me to another building and it did seem quite sketchy, as if I possibly—I absolutely was—entering a private (and vacant) office.
But not like feeling sketchy was going to stop me from checking out the giant plastic hand.
The documents recommended a visit to the MEM Museum so I went there too. This museum, my favorite of those I had time to visit, has signs from the project hanging in the lobby. Here’s a picture I took of the museum’s video introduction to the project.
Montréal is a great city and like all great cities, it is dynamic. I was only there for four days, but I tried to see as much of it as I could. And of course, I discovered plenty of signs:
How I got to Montréal: flight from Chicago.
Where I slept: Hotel Le Roberval. Price: CAD $235 for a single. Recommended: yes.
Picnic at the Cathedral 
amazing that sign project. I like the waitress with birthday cake. As for the real still functioning signs in your Montreal wanderings, that quagringle Chinese-French- English- Hindu??? Sign is a keeper. The 2 different strip joint signs clearly reflects a cultural difference in Montreal vs. In Vancouver or Calgary. There are strip joints but I don’t think the municipality allows public signs with figurative sexy images any more. I haven’t seen them lately.
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I was pretty fascinated by the use of multiple languages and tried to keep track of variations, and the types of French I was hearing (+seeing on the signage). Hochelaga, I think, was the highest French density. And I heard some French spoken that seemed to be from immigrants from France—I believe that was the Plateau neighborhood. Also Haitian-accented French around town. Code switching in the US is often used as a way to imply racial or ethnic stereotyping but I was interpreting it in Montreal as more pragmatic act even when the cultural value is (as it should be) in on language preservation.
Yeah if that quagringle sign ever comes down I hope the Montreal Sign Project preserves it!
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You can count on the French language to make the sign for a strip club somehow less sleazy than it definitely was. Montréal was the first North American city I’d ever set foot in, and I really enjoyed it.
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Ooh la la, où sont passés mes pieds?
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What a lovely idea for a museum. There are so many ephemeral signs I see everywhere. Would be lovely to collect some of them
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I think we have an emotional connection to those ephemeral signs that we don’t always recognize. There’s a tension between the way they are privately owned but often experienced as a kind of community asset.
I would love to collect vintage hot dog stand signs, if I had the room.
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That was a super initiative on the part of Dr.Soar.
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Agreed and I’m sure there’s a lot of logistics around outreach, transportation and preservation that go into making the initiative a success.
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Wonderful signs. I remember some of them. Warm greetings from a 68 year old retired lady living in Montreal, Canada 😊 ❤️ 🇨🇦
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You live in a wonderful city! What’s your favorite sign in Montreal?
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