Our Trip to Canada: Street Art in Montreal and Quebec City

One of the things I like to do on trips these days is observe the street art that you find in different places. Most cities these days have realized that public art adds to the quality of life and they encourage it, which in fact does make for a better experience for both visitors and natives alike. It’s a bit of a hard sell in the US sometimes, but even here there are strides being made. Both Montreal and Quebec City had some really nice public artwork out there.

For one thing, there were a lot of murals in Montreal. Really, quite a lot.

We saw all of these just in our first day.

And all of these were in the neighborhood where we were staying.

This was the view from the window of the smaller family-run hotel we stayed in when we got back to Montreal.

And these were in the neighborhood as well.

This one towers over the city and you get a really great view of it from the Beaux Arts Museum. For those who aren’t familiar, it shows Leonard Cohen, a native son of Westmount.

I didn’t see too many murals in Quebec City, but this one was worth remembering.

In addition to murals there was art pretty much everywhere. The Ring in downtown Montreal I’ve already featured in this space, and the knotted streetlights in Quebec City as well. But there was definitely more to see in both places. Quebec City in particular seemed to focus on sculptures of varying kinds, though that might simply have been an artifact of where we were.

These two were right as you come up the hill and into the old quarter of Quebec City. They’re pretty much next to each other.

The top one below was further downtown, while the bottom one was next to the Ursuline Chapel.

We passed the statue with the rings on our way to the promenade by the Citadel and then found the next two in various places in Old Quebec City.

Montreal was not statue-free, however. This one we walked by on our first day as we headed over to the dumpling place. 

And this was on McGill’s campus, because education and art are things that go together well. 

This was sitting on the sidewalk as we headed downtown one day and it took me a while to get a good photograph of it because just as I was about to take my picture some Overentitled Influencer (tm) barged past me and spent ten minutes ordering her partner around while he snapped away. But eventually they floated off to plague some other quarter of Montreal and I got the photo I wanted.

We found these further downtown.

This one actually sat in front of a Chinese restaurant. For all I know it was an advertisement, but it seemed fun. Coffee cup for scale.

And this one was in front of the Beaux Arts Museum, I think. I like this style so I tend to notice it as I walk by.

There were definitely a few favorites that stood out. This one, for example, was also on the way to the Beaux Arts Museum. It is apparently one large collection of jokes for those who know, from the pear logo on his computer (a nod toward Apple and toward the fact that, according to a quick internet search that I just did, the French word for pear – “poire” – can also mean “a gullible person”) to the squirrel stealing his hamburger bun to the fact that if you go up and look at the computer screen it says “Steve Jobs Is Dead” on it.

This was on the mailbox just outside of our first hotel. Fuck that guy indeed.

And while this was not really meant to be art – just a warning sign for passersby – I have to admit it was one of my favorites. I fully intend to use it online whenever people feel entitled to throw rubbish into my open mind.

One must have standards, after all.