{"id":948,"date":"2008-05-26T18:50:32","date_gmt":"2008-05-26T23:50:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingmontreal.ca\/2008\/05\/26\/in-ndg-a-ghost-sign-is-revealed\/"},"modified":"2013-01-21T11:24:38","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T16:24:38","slug":"in-ndg-a-ghost-sign-is-revealed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2008\/05\/26\/in-ndg-a-ghost-sign-is-revealed\/","title":{"rendered":"In NDG, a ghost sign is revealed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.urbanphoto.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/05\/ghostsign-mccabe.JPG\" width=\"500\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Last week, someone named BK McCabe sent me an email about an old tobacco ad that had been revealed when a fire-damaged building was torn down on Sherbrooke Street West in NDG. Not too long after, another NDGer, Grant Martin, emailed me about the same thing. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Interestingly, one of the first results you get by googling &#8216;Turret Cigarettes&#8217; is Mordecai Richler talking about smoking them when he was in high school. Mid-1940s I guess. Makes you wonder how many more of these there are, preserved from the elements but completely hidden by brick,&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;I don&#8217;t know what their plans are for this lot, or how long this will remain visible.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>There are hundreds of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.urbanphoto.net\/blog\/2006\/10\/31\/this-city-is-haunted\/\">old painted advertisements<\/a>, known as ghost ads, still visible on exposed brick walls throughout the city. Each one is a window into the commercial life of historical Montreal, giving you a chance, as you walk through the city, to see the evolution of marketing campaigns and advertising styles over the decades, not to mention product fashions &#8212; when was the last time you saw a billboard for shoe polish, sewing machines or Worcestershire sauce? In this bilingual city, ghost ads also capture a bit of socio-linguistic geography, with mostly English ads in the west end of the city and mostly French ads in the east. <\/p>\n<p>The longer they are exposed to air and light, the more quickly these ads disappear. Some, protected from the elements by the shade of a neighbouring building, look much the same as when they were first painted. Others have decayed rapidly. It&#8217;s a bit ironic that the best way to preserve these ads is to actually cover them up. Frequently, when a building is demolished, an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.urbanphoto.net\/blog\/2007\/10\/05\/a-ghost-appears-but-not-for-long\/\">old painted ad is revealed<\/a>. Eventually, they will be covered up once again. Ghosts, after all, never appear for long.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.urbanphoto.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/05\/ghostsign-martin.jpeg\" width=\"500\" \/><\/p>\n<p><i>Photo credit goes to BK McCabe (top) and Grant Martin (bottom).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.urbanphoto.net\/blog\/2008\/05\/26\/a-ghost-sign-revealed\/\">Crossposted from Urbanphoto<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, someone named BK McCabe sent me an email about an old tobacco ad that had been revealed when a fire-damaged building was torn down on Sherbrooke Street West in NDG. Not too long after, another NDGer, Grant Martin, emailed me about the same thing. &#8220;Interestingly, one of the first results you get by<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2008\/05\/26\/in-ndg-a-ghost-sign-is-revealed\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"sr-only\">&#8220;In NDG, a ghost sign is revealed&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5008,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7830,7837,7839],"tags":[2470,2469,14,30,125,64],"class_list":["post-948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communication","category-history","category-neighbourhoods","tag-advertising-styles","tag-grant-martin","tag-historical","tag-languagesigns","tag-montreal","tag-ndg"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>In NDG, a ghost sign is revealed - Spacing Montreal<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2008\/05\/26\/in-ndg-a-ghost-sign-is-revealed\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"In NDG, a ghost sign is revealed - Spacing Montreal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Last week, someone named BK McCabe sent me an email about an old tobacco ad that had been revealed when a fire-damaged building was torn down on Sherbrooke Street West in NDG. 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