The Montreal Métro, a place of coming and going, of filling up and of emptying out, of daily frustrations and of moments of delight -

as a child, the metro is a place of curiosity and of discovery;

as a teenager, a place to meet friends, a gateway to mobility freedom;

as a student, a necessary evil;

as a young professional, an acknowledgement of the participation in the daily grind;

as a parent, an obstacle course of stairs & turnstiles, a labyrinth of broken escalators & forceful wind tunnels;

as a photographer, a world of endless intrigue, of colour and light, and of interesting characters …

Inaugurated in 1966, then Mayor Jean Drapeau declared the Montreal Métro  - a profoundly human work, in the sense that it calls upon us to modify to a large extent our way of living and of navigating our city.

From the onset, Drapeau had the vision of making the Montreal Métro another kind of city - a vast art galerie of sorts, reassuring, inspiring and accompanying passengers along their daily commute.

To achieve this goal, the Commission de transport de Montréal (CTM) commissioned diverse architects to conceive and build each station with its own unique identity, often related to the borough in which it resided, and engaged various artists to integrate their works of art throughout the network of stations.

Through the collective efforts of civil servants, architects and artists, the Montreal Métro integrated colour, light and beauty into what was fundamentally a cavernous, somewhat daunting underground space, and created a vast maze of public art accessible to all and subconsciously appreciated by many!