Election Sign Season
Not an election sign, but much more amusing
I arrived in Montreal just in time for the most exciting municipal election campaign in decades. All at once, a bit too early for Halloween, all of City Hall’s skeletons fell out of the closet, with revelations that construction contracts are rigged and accusations that the municipal government works primarily around a system of bribes and kickbacks. From what I saw, though, this year’s campaign posters are not nearly so dramatic.
The catchiest and best-looking posters belong to Projet Montréal, which adopted a motif of superimposing a Polaroid depicting candidates or a rosy post-Projet future on scenes of the city. Posters for the other parties and candidates range from uninspired to unintentionally amusing, like those for the Montreal Pride Party, about which everyone is confused (is it a gay rights party? Or just a party for people proud of Montreal?).
Projet Montréal promises a future full of families
Proud in which way?
“Let’s get it Done”: about as Generic a slogan as you can get
Tags: Election Signs, Montreal, Signs
Kate M. says:
Both of the other dominant parties rather righteously chose to abstain from placards this time. I think they wanted to save the money and do their campaigning in other ways, but it was labelled as being for the environment.
October 30th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Karl Leung says:
election sign redux :)
ooh les beaux arts de montréal
October 30th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Christopher DeWolf says:
Kate, that’s not entirely true. They didn’t hang any posters in public space, but they still made them, as you can see here:
October 31st, 2009 at 5:55 am
Christopher Szabla says:
There’s a surprising amount of English in these signs, at least compared to the last sets of election posters I remember you sharing. Have attitudes toward language relaxed significantly over the last few years?
October 31st, 2009 at 7:03 pm
Christopher DeWolf says:
English seems marginally more prevalent these days than it was when I first went to Montreal in 2000, but I’m thinking specifically of commercial signage. I think electoral signage has always been bilingual in more English-speaking areas.
November 4th, 2009 at 7:59 am