This article was originally written in English.
Here’s a funny story. In 2007 I hosted an event called Logo Cities: An International Symposium on Signs, Branding, and Lettering in Public Space at Concordia University.
Logo Cities featured over thirty speakers from an eclectic range of disciplines and professions, a distinguished keynote, a gallery show of old signs and new artworks, and the Québec premiere of a splendid documentary film titled simply Helvetica (USA, 2007, directed by Gary Hustwit). Yep, that’s a film about a font.
The organizing principle for this successful event was the scholarly notion of hypercommercialism: a stark recognition that, in the most developed capitalist economies of the early 21st century, the sheer number of advertising and marketing messages has intensified immeasurably, as they insinuate themselves into every conceivable media nook and cultural cranny. It seemed to me that nowhere was this more evident than in the branded city skyline: a constellation of huge illuminated logos visible on top of most high-rise buildings in Montréal’s urban core. What better indication of a city’s economic and cultural investments at any given historical moment?
So, here's the funny bit. While remaining committed to the idea of hypercommercialism, the Logo Cities gallery show left my collaborators and me in no doubt that some of the humblest local signs are packed with value and meaning for folks who have lived, worked, or shopped near them. They actually matter. Further, in the afterglow of the symposium, we also realized that all three of the recently retired signs we’d hauled into the gallery space were in grave danger of being lost forever.
So now what? Is it all hypercommercial excess, or invaluable cultural heritage? Short answer: yes.
Three years and many skeptical reactions later, I got permission from the university to put the MSP’s first five signs on permanent display in our newly refurbished Communication Studies and Journalism building on the Loyola campus.
To my co-conspirator Nancy Marrelli, and two other Concordians - Graham Carr and the late Justin Powlowski - who never said ‘no’: my eternal gratitude. And for the indulgence of many department chairs and every faculty colleague, staff member, student, and visiting alum since then, I say thank you.
As of late Novembre 2024, we have over fifty signs in the collection, with new ones arriving out of the blue every couple of months, on average. Backlit plexi panels, three-dimensional lettering expertly shaped in metal and wood, open- and closed-channel metal letters with neon tubing, animated sharks driven by hidden fibre-optics, screen-printed and thermo-formed panels, hand-painted tin on wooden frames, reverse-glass painted panels from the 1930s, shaped metal ‘cans’. And two large, split-flap, passenger information displays from the old Mirabel airport terminal.
At this point in time, twenty-five of the MSP’s signs are on permanent display in the CJ building on the Loyola campus. Another fourteen have been gifted to the MEM (Centre des mémoires montréalaises, formerly the Centre d'histoire de Montréal), which opened in 2023!
This includes the majestic St James United Church sign, which was designed, built, and installed by fabled sign company Claude Néon in 1947. This glorious behemoth, saved for all of us by the Reverend Arlen Bonnar, is about twenty feet tall, double-sided, sporting renewed blue and red neon.
Quite a few more signs are undergoing repairs prior to exhibition, or are in temporary storage, including the fascia from Depanneur Lalonde in St Henri, and a huge neon steam train from the old Udisco model shop on Blvd Décarie.
We’ve learned a great deal since 2010. While signs are clearly not the businesses they represent, they remain richly evocative signifiers of urban life. From personal memories of living or working in particular neighbourhoods, to the business owners who commissioned these signs and built their livelihoods through retail ventures, to larger questions about migration and entrepreneurship, to the hidden stories of signmakers and the changing technologies of signmaking, it is beyond doubt that even the humblest of signs are rich repositories for ‘ordinary’ cultural memories and histories. This last point is vividly illustrated by recent debacles over the removal (and swift re-installation) of the Archambault music store sign, and the unilateral decision by Archer Daniels Midland, in 2006, to decommission the Farine Five Roses sign (since renovated and reinstalled).
At the MSP we’ve learned to focus on local signs rather than generic or inter/national brands: Warshaw and Steinberg, not Loblaw or Costco. The Navarino Café and Depanneur Lalonde not Starbucks or Dollarama. We don’t compete for old signs. If someone else is there to save it for their rec room or café wall, then great! (On the other hand, if it’s headed for the dumpster, we gotta talk.) We rely on serendipity: sometimes it’s enough for a potential sign donor to find us on the social media grapevine; once in a while, it seems that a sign resists being saved: Magnan’s Tavern, Jardin Tiki.
We don’t do anything as grand as ‘restoration’ (thank you Nancy!): we gently repair, if/as necessary. The MSP is, after all, a retirement home for old signs, not a museum; a sign petting zoo, not an art gallery; a lovable heap of commercial detritus, not the crown jewels. We also find ourselves continually advocating for Montréal’s sign heritage, promoting awareness, conversation, and unabashed nostalgia. On that score, kudos to the boroughs of Ville-Marie and Plateau-Mont-Royal for establishing local registries of signs to be saved.
Rue Ste-Catherine can attest. What was once a visual feast of brash commerce, a cacophony of neon marquees, signs practically climbing over one another to be seen, an outrageous flurry of lettering and logos and animations has disappeared, only to be replaced by the kinds of sober branded signs that make us feel we could be in practically any North American city. Which brings us to another sort of sign crime: plentiful, pitifully designed lightboxes with truly lousy layouts, peeling vinyl letters, stretched and mangled type, and lurid clip art. And yet sign museums and exhibitions continue to sprout up: the Vancouver Neon Project, the Neon Sign Museum (Edmonton), the American Sign Museum (Cincinnati), the Neon Museum (Las Vegas), the Ignite Sign Art Museum (Tucson) and the San Francisco Neon. Often the best kind of tip-off we get is for a sign I’ve never heard of, hidden under another sign or tucked away in someone’s garage for twenty or forty or sixty years. Then all it takes is to activate Montréal’s social media hive-mind, and the enthusiastic anecdotes, vivid recollections, and archival photos begin to surface. That’s when we really know we’ve struck sign gold.
________________
The Montréal Signs Project is open to the public, and its director, Matt Soar, is delighted to give tours to small groups on request. He’s also grateful for your kind support to help fund the MSP’s work at montrealsignsproject.ca.
