A record of our experiences while serving in Montreal Canada

Festival of the Murals

This obsession started months ago when Sister Morris and myself decided to eat lunch at McDonalds. Across the street was this character artwork and I took my first photo. I had no idea what this was going to turn into. It was a rough, painted on wood boards, faded and unappealing but it was also different. Then I would find one image after another, after another, after another… Then I discovered Montreal held an annual festival celebrating their artistic street art. By then, I had a couple dozen photos and with the arrival of spring, artwork was being found daily. Proceed on – if you dare.

I chose this first photo just to say: “Hello from Montreal”. Although it’s on the side of a single story building, it really tells you what you are about to be treated with. Now I am going to be truthful (after all we are on a mission) in that I did not take all of these pictures myself. I asked the Senior Missionary group if they had run across “building art” and to send me what they had seen. As a result, some pictures have snow on them and others have various daylight looks. Finally, I did also use some pictures from the internet but just to show a different perspective (like from the sky, or overhead) or pictures of how some of the art was created. This is best viewed on a full screen computer but will be fine on your phones but you will not get the same effect. Finally, you will want to scroll down through all of them to see the last images of the self-portrait and how it was created. Happy scrolling and welcome to one of Montreal’s most famous features.

When Montreal decides to do something, they always do it BIG!!! You will remember the “starting line” photo of the weekend bike ride, well the Montreal Mural Festival is the same way. The two pictures below show how the festival streatches in both directions until out of site. The first picture shows the festival we had just walked the first half, and the second photo is as far into the distant still to go. This is Saint Laurant Avenue and is the center street for the festival. Throughout the length of the street has numerous murals that have been painted on the buildings. Not all of these pictures are on Saint Laurant but are spaced throughout the city.

Montreal is an artest’s paradise. They encourage building art as a way of expressing themselves. Now on top of all these wonderful mureals, almost every available wall has some paint on it. Unfortunately, you would classify much of it as “tagging” and I’ll include some of that later.

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Most building art is mutiple stories high and require lifts to reach the top of the building. Some are more than 10 stories high!

You see cars parked in front of buildings or people walking (or riding) through the pictures to give you some perespective to their height.

Some of these are literally across the street from our apartment shot from our little patio on the 4th floor.

Just to answer the question below of the woman standing against the wall, yes it’s a mural, not a picture.

The photo below is painted on the brick of the pharmacy where we get out prescriptions filled. We walk by the “Christmas wrap” building every day. Even in the Metro (subway) is mural art. We had been riding the Metro for months before realizing it was even there.

It’s impossible! But they just keep on coming…The far right picture is just finishing being painted. If you look closely to the bottom you will see the artist rolling out some paint as the picture was breing taken.

I wanted to highlight this little bycycle rider who was riding in and out of the Montreal Ward church parking lot as fast as his little legs would carry him. His parents were there with him and would check for any traffic before they allowed him to ride to and from the street into the parking lot. He is 3 and a half years old and very skilled at riding his bike – even jumping over small imperfections in the road. His parents let me take his picture in front of their garage with the Star Wars mural that the family had painted together a few years ago. This is literally across the street from the church building where Sister Morris and I spend many hours at each week. I struck up a conversation with them telling them we were part of a team in Montreal working in the National Archives buiding digitizing the records and posting new geneology names and dates every week. They were really interested in the Family Search software so I spent some time showing them how it worked. The younger Sister missionaries later indicated that they had knocked on their door many times but were politely told “no thank you” but now Family Search may have opened their door just a little. You never know.

More pictures have arrived since the first publication so here are additional photos.

Winding down. Becides these fabulous murals, there is a wide variety of street art that is not quite the quality of these professional artists. I promised to include some of these including those that are just plain “tagging”. If there is a vertical wall exposed to the street, it is likely to have some sort of design on it including freeway walls (don’t know how they paint on the walls because there is little to hang onto). Mailbox on the street are also subject to art freedom.

Ok now for the big fanale. Leonard Cohen was a local singer-songwriter, poet and novelist who was beloved and respected in Montreal. Themes commoinly explored through his work included faith and morality, isolation and depression, social and political conflict, romantic love, desire, regret and loss. The popular song : “Hallelujah” was penned by Leonard Cohen. You can read about him online. His daughter took this portrait photo before his death in 2016.

This immense 10,000 square-foot mural rising 21 storeys above the city took a team of artists thousands of hours to complete. In the evening, the mural lights up with soft lighting, but no less spectacular. I love the fact that they used a toilet plunger to give the mural skin on his face and hands a rougher defination.

This is by no means all of the artwork in Montreal. In actuality, it’s probably less than half but you can see how much there is to enjoy.