Even now, 40 30 years (ed—oops!) after Bill 101 mandated that Montreal conduct its official business in French only, it is not uncommon to find old English or bilingual public signs. Forget the politics; these signs are a fascinating window into Montreal’s past.
I’ve written about Montreal’s street signs before — you can find my photos and articles listed under Urbanphoto’s Signage category — but I’m still finding plenty of nice examples of old or unusual street signs.
The Ste. Catherine St. sign pictured above is particularly interesting because it does not seem to conform to any street sign standard, linguistic or otherwise. Found in Westmount, it is written “St-Catherine St.,” using the English abbreviation of “saint,” but with a French hyphen instead of an English period. It is also unusual in that it contain an English generic (“street”) whereas most Westmount signs omit the generic altogether.
Below is the corner of “Rue Rose-de-Lima” and “Workman St.” in St. Henri. It’s a nice example of the old pre-1970s tradition of using a French generic for French street names and an English generic for English names.
5 comments
pssst…. 30 years.
The older Westmount signs all had the English generic, like this one. They started omitting the generic in the 1980s as a sort of token compliance to the new language law (although it’s explicitly disallowed by the Quebec toponymy commission rules, which call for a French generic).
Note that the shape and typeface of the sign are identical to those used at the time in Toronto. Westmount, TMR, Dorval, and Pointe-Claire all used some variation on Toronto-style signs; until the mid-70s, Montreal was using lettering imported from London, England, illustrated here by Rose-de-Lima and Workman. Odd, but at least it’s more attractive than many North American street signs.
Aha! That confirms my suspicions. The street names on a lot of Westmount signs are very awkwardly placed. When I talked with people at City Hall, though, they swore up and down that Westmount’s signs had never had generics.
yeah dude. 1977.
Back in the sixties Montreal still had many Incandesent ‘Filament’ style street lights which, in addition to using alot of current for the lumens produced, ‘burned out’ with regularity.
The City of Montreal had a fleet of 1950s ‘ladder trucks’, painted green/yellow, similar to a fire dept ‘ladder truck’ which circulated changing light bulbs in streetlights.
One sad thing to see was a ‘city’ ladder truck going around, at taxpayers’ expense, putting tape over abbreviations on street signs such as ‘Ave’, ‘St’, etc.
The dialogues with passers by was interesting, to say the least.
Next came the Anglo exodus to the West.