Street Signs and Street Art

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Swiss Lane: Still Mysterious

Last year, after returning from Montreal, I posted about a Mile End alley with a strange name that doesn’t appear anywhere in the city’s official toponymical records. Nobody has yet come forward with an answer as to how Swiss Lane got its name, but one Flickr user, DubyDub2009, did a bit of extra research and found that Swiss Lane used to be even longer than it is today.

In a map dated 1949, Swiss Lane is shown running two blocks, from St. Dominique to de Gaspé. Today it runs only between St. Dom and Casgrain. At some point, probably in the 1950s, a small factory was built on the lane’s eastern half. But the street signs were never changed to reflect this fact, so the one sign of Swiss Lane’s existence still points towards the long-vanished eastern part of the alley.

The Mystery of Swiss Lane

Even after seven years of walking its streets, I’m still finding new things in Mile End, the neighbourhood I called home before I left Montreal. Back for a visit last month, I got around mostly by bike, which took me down streets on which I wouldn’t normally walk, like the quiet stretch of Casgrain in the old garment district. That’s where I spotted a laneway with an unusual name: Swiss Lane, according to the street sign, though “lane” has been patched over with white tape and the alley’s official name is now “ruelle Swiss.”

I can’t find any clues as to the origins of Swiss Lane’s name. The city’s otherwise comprehensive Répertoire historique des toponymes montréalais contains no reference to anything Swiss or Suisse. The only mention I can find in the Lovell’s Directory indicates that Swiss Lane was “not built upon.” (Its entry in the 1935 directory is found right under Swastika Avenue, which was apparently a lane off Ste. Famille Street.) So what’s the story behind Swiss Lane?

Well-Aged

Street sign on Taipa, Macau

Four Generations

Hong Kong has a wealth of street signs from different eras, but unlike Montreal, political and linguistic tensions are buried far beneath the surface. No matter what the age or style, Hong Kong street signs follow a formula: black text, white background, English above Chinese. There have been some minor variations through the years; in older signs, the Chinese is usually smaller than the English (no doubt reflecting the colonial mindset of the era’s bureaucrats), and the two languages were sometimes differentiated by colour.

New Signs in Old Montreal

For all that I’ve written about Montreal’s street signs, I haven’t mentioned much about the signs found in Old Montreal, the city’s birthplace and one of its most important tourist attractions. Although the signs here are meant to reflect the red-and-beige colour scheme of the city’s first street signs, they are actually a recent invention, created in the 1980s with a somewhat contrived typeface that is meant to look historic.

For a long time, I had assumed that all of the signs in the old city were homogeneous, but on a recent walk around the neighbourhood a friend pointed out to me that there were two different types: one, mounted on buildings with the street name written in all-caps, and others, mounted on posts and written in an entirely different font. I can’t explain the difference between the two — maybe some of our readers can help.

But I did notice something else that was interesting: at the corner of Le Royer and St. Laurent there is a building with street names engraved into its façade. Just like the street signs of the 1950s, when English signs were place on one side of the street and French signs on the other, the street name on one side of the building was in English (Le Royer Street and St. Lawrence Boulevard) and in French (rue Le Royer and boulevard Saint-Laurent) on the other.

Welcome to Hampstead

Writers and journalists looking for a quick and easy symbol of Montreal’s political and linguistic divide usually find one in the city’s downtown west end. There, in the shadow of the Montreal Children’s Hospital, René Lévesque Boulevard turns into Dorchester Avenue as it crosses Atwater and passes from Montreal into Westmount, a remnant of the divisive legacy of nationalism in Quebec.

Symbolically, I’ve always thought that this streetcorner did Montreal an injustice. It’s too simple, too obvious. It doesn’t jive with the nuanced reality of the city’s everyday life.

A more representative streetcorner can be found further north, on the border between Montreal and Hampstead. On its west side, in Hampstead, a newish set of street signs marks the corner of Rue Macdonald Road and Rue Fleet Road. Right across the street, in Montreal, two much older signs, dating back to the 1950s, describe the corner simply as Macdonald and Van Horne, their English articles—“Ave.” and “St.”—covered by white tape.

About eight different varieties of street signs can be found within Montreal’s old city limits; that doesn’t include the two dozen other kinds of signs seen in former suburbs like Outremont or de-merged municipalities like Hampstead. As innocuous and quotidian as they might seem, these signs capture the real complexity of its social and political landscape.

Language in Toulouse

Toulouse is a large, cosmopolitan but relaxed and laid back southern French city. It feels like it has as much in common with nearby Spain as with northern France.

The bilingual street signs here are a tantalising reminder of how the city’s history could have been different. Had Occitanie remained a distinct culture and society from that of Northern France, Toulouse would have been its capital. Perhaps the street signs would have Occitan on top, and might not even be accompanied by a French translation.

In fact, you will not see Occitan on commercial signs, or hear it spoken on the streets (or, at least, I did not) in Toulouse — after French, Arabic and English predominate. And yet, the bilingual street signs serve as a reminder that, although clearly integrated for a long time into the French Republic, there is something distinctively Toulousain. This is an example of the use of language as a common shared heritage, a cultural signifier, if you will, rather than simply as a means of communication.

Chinatown, Greektown

Toronto, like many cities across North America, uses its street signs to identify neighbourhoods. Chinatown and Greektown are no exception.

In Greektown, which extends along the Danforth for several blocks, Greek signs are posted above the standard English signs. It’s more a token recognition of the neighbourhood’s historical ethnic character than anything else.

In the downtown Chinatown, however, all street signs are bilingual, and these Chinese/English signs can even be found on streets well outside the neighbourhood, like on the Queen Street West shopping district, across from MuchMusic and a block away from the Paramount entertainment complex.

Calgary’s Missing Street Names

I’ve always resented the fact that Calgary’s streets are numbered. Not just numbered, but numbered according to quadrant, so that streets are known as 4th Street SW or 36th Avenue NE, and 4th Street and 4th Avenue intersect not just once, but four times, in each corner of the city. What makes this even worse is that nearly all streets in Calgary are numbered. Except in recent subdivisons, or in rare cases, there are no names to break up the monotony. It lends the city a certain soulless, anonymous air.

That wasn’t always the case. When Calgary was just a young city, a town really, all of its streets were named. Look at an old map and the history of Calgary is revealed in its street names. In the downtown area, straddling the Canadian Pacific Railroad tracks, many streets were named after CPR executives: Stephen Avenue, for the company’s first president; Van Horne Avenue, after the man who oversaw construction of the transcontinental railway; McIntyre Avenue and Angus Avenue, after two of the CPR’s investors. In Atlantic Avenue and Pacific Avenue, which ran along the north and south side of the railroad tracks, there was a certain sweet harmony.

Even more interesting was Rouleauville, an old French-Canadian village located just south of Calgary, around St. Mary’s Cathedral, in what is now known as the Mission. Here, the street names honoured prominent Franco-Albertan religious leaders like Lacombe, Doucet and Grandin. Rouleau Street enshrined the name of the two brothers who promoted the idea of a French village near Calgary and secured a land grant from the federal government. Other streets testified to Rouleauville’s Catholic faith, like Notre Dame Road, St. Jean Baptiste Street and St. Joseph Street.

Calgary lost its street names in 1904, when it adopted a numbering system that saw the city divided into quadrants, with Centre Street — formerly McTavish Street — dividing east from west. Rouleauville, a separate municipal entity, retained its street names until 1907, when it was annexed to Calgary. Not only did its French-speaking character eventually erode, it lost the only overt reminder of that French-Canadian heritage: its street names.

I can’t help but wonder Calgary’s the loss of its street names at such a formative time in its history planted the seed of an ahistorical city. For years, Calgary’s relationship with its own history has been one of complete ignorance. Its politicians and developers have long been eager to do away with what few old buildings it has and it could be said, at least until recently, that Calgary has lacked a sense of self. Much of its identity revolves around traditions invented for the purpose of tourism and economic investment, like the white cowboy hats that have come to symbolize the city.

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More Exceptional Street Signs

Even now, 40 years 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. While some ideologues might consider this a bad thing, I’m inclined to view it as a window into Montreal’s past, and a fascinating one at that.

I’ve written about Montreal’s street signs before — you can find my photos and articles listed under the 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 tradition of using a French generic for French street names and an English generic for English names.

Lincoln Avenue

Hidden in a corner of downtown Montreal, on a residential street named Lincoln Avenue, is a treasure trove of old street signs. They are in English, but surprisingly enough, they do not appear to have been taped over. Among the signs is an especially rare kind with white lettering and a blue background; it must predate the 1950s. Best of all, the signs are mounted on buildings rather than on free-standing signposts.

Street Signs in Lotusland

I’ve always had a thing for Vancouver’s street signs. They seem somehow deviant and subtly stylish. The stark black background is unusual enough, but I especially love the white border, which angles in at the sign’s edges; it’s reminiscent of the mid-century modern verve that lurks behind the wholesome attitude that present-day Vancouver has tried so hard to affect.

There are some interesting variations on this black sign. In Chinatown, it takes on a bulkier appearance, a fat rectangle whose corners have been chomped off. Elegantly-scripted Chinese transliterations of street names are inscribed above the official English name. (Keefer Street becomes Kay fah gai, Pender Street East Peen dah dong gai.) In the Punjabi Market, an Indian neighbourhood in South Vancouver, Punjabi transliterations are squeezed onto the narrow standard signs; a bilingual yellow-and-blue disc bearing the neighbourhood’s name is affixed.

Beyond these black signs, Vancouver has one very interesting, but increasingly rare, variation: cylindrical street signs that are illuminated from within. I’ve only seen these on downtown streets such as Granville or Robson and, if the fate of Toronto’s similar late-sixties street signs is any indication, they will eventually disappear. That would be a terrible shame.

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Finding Your Way in Quebec City

I tracked down five types of street signs within the traditional limits of Quebec City. The oldest signs are these attractive blue and white ones. The highest concentration of such signs are in Saint-Jean-Baptiste.

This type of sign with a curious mix of embossed lower case and capital letters is the next in our chronological progression. Saint-Sauveur is where most of these are located.

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