Every Route Is Scenic on Montréal's Outdoor Mural Tours 

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• Courtesy Of Olivier Bousquet/MU
• "Tower of Songs," Leonard Cohen mural by El Mac and Gene Pendon

One of my favorite enticements in Montréal is the art — in museums and galleries, sure, but also in the streets. The city is teeming with sculptures, installations and murals, and viewing them is absolutely free. Bonus: Finding them is a good way to get to know the neighborhoods.

So valued is public art in the city that it has a designated bureau, sensibly called Art Public Montréal. One of its roles is overseeing the city's apportionment of "1% for art." The province-wide program requires that any public building or site reserve 1 percent of its construction budget for the inclusion of artwork. To date, it has commissioned 3,500 works of art around Québec. In Montréal alone, nearly one-third of the artworks visible to the public have resulted from this integration of art into architecture, according to projects director Barbara Renault.

Handily for visitors, Art Public's website describes numerous self-guided walking (or biking) tours, organized by neighborhood and theme, throughout Montréal. Some feature more sculptures than murals; a few of them have audio guides.

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• Courtesy Of Olivier Bousquet/MU
• "Breath of Spring" by David Guinn and Phillip Adams

The tourist-friendly Quartier des Spectacles contains not only multiple music venues and the Musée d'art Contemporain de Montréal (Museum of Contemporary Art) but also plentiful outdoor artwork. For example, pedestrians can take in one of the city's oldest murals at the corner of avenue du Président-Kennedy and rue Jeanne-Mance. Painted in 1972 and remarkably well maintained, it features a pair of lips, slightly parted to reveal pearly teeth, and what looks suspiciously like smoke floating upward from the mouth to envelop a mandala-like circle. Trippy.

A tour of rue Ontario, in the borough of Ville-Marie, offers nine distinctive murals of earthenware mosaic by noted Montréal artist Laurent Gascon. His portrait-style works are dedicated to local artists, musicians, comedians and poets.

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• Pamela Polston ©️ Seven Days
• "Hommage à Phyllis Lambert" by Melissa Del Pinto

During a trip earlier this month, two friends and I chose to seek out the murals listed for a residential section of the Quartier Latin — in part because it was less familiar to us than the streets better known for boutiques, nightlife and a lively student population. Also, Art Public describes this tour as about an hour long, and it was just blocks from our downtown hotel. An easy outing before dinner.

Along and near boulevard de Maisonneuve, we found absolutely beautiful works of art adorning the sides of the housing complex Habitations Jeanne-Mance, and in two themes: the seasons and the elements. "Breath of Spring," for example, depicts distant people enjoying a huge park that's infused with pink and chartreuse. The colors are whisked across the image, as if conveying the brevity of the season. This and the summer, fall and winter scenes were created by the team of David Guinn and Phillip Adams.

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• Courtesy Of Olivier Bousquet/MU
• "Cessez-le-feu" by Phillip Adams

Adams was also the creator of a gorgeous mural titled "L'air du temps." Rendered in a range of blues, it's a photorealistic view of the historic neighborhood prior to the construction of public housing. Huge cumulus clouds cluster over the buildings; three bright orange traffic cones in an intersection provide a contemporary counterpoint.

All these murals were brought about by MU — a charitable nonprofit whose mission is "to beautify the city of Montréal by creating murals that are anchored in local communities," according to its website. MU is one of several entities that produce murals in the city — in addition to privately funded projects — but is distinctive for its social objectives. The group conducts many projects within schools and with residents of all ages.

In later reading, I discovered that Guinn and Adams are from Philadelphia, the city whose mural program inspired the very existence of MU. "Your American readers might like to know that," Elizabeth-Ann Doyle said in a phone call. Doyle is cofounder as well as executive and artistic director of MU. Born and raised in Montréal, she laughingly called herself the "grandmother of Montréal's mural scene."

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• Pamela Polston ©️ Seven Days
• "Manifeste à Paul-Emile Borduas" by Thomas Csano

While working with Canada's Cirque de Soleil in Philadelphia years ago, Doyle and cofounder Emmanuelle Hébert were inspired by the Mural Arts Program there and decided that Montréal would be the "perfect host" for a similar project. MU was born in 2007 and has since produced 130 murals (and counting) and more than 300 community projects.

In 2010, MU launched a mural series called "Montréal's Cultural Builders" that honors significant individuals in the city's creative history. "Murals have always told stories and celebrated people," Doyle said. "We just wanted to have the DNA of Montréal."

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• Courtesy Of Olivier Bousquet/MU
• “L’air du temps” by Phillip Adams

Two examples: In 2022, the artist Hsix (Carlos Oliva) created on rue Normand a photorealistic tribute to Jean Lapointe, a Canadian musician, actor and senator. A 2020 mural on avenue Henri-Julien, by Annie Hamel, pays homage to the American Canadian singer Lhasa de Sela. In the realistic portrait, a hummingbird hovers over the artist's microphone.

Leonard Cohen is arguably the best-known Montréaler — at least to the rest of the world. Though it was not on our tour, the musician and poet's immense portrait can be seen from multiple vantage points in the city. Covering the entire side of a building on rue Crescent, it's 21 stories tall. In the image, Cohen wears his signature fedora and holds one hand over his heart.

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• Courtesy Of Olivier Bousquet/MU
• "Au fil de l'eau" by Phillip Adams

Painted by El Mac and Gene Pendon and titled "Tower of Songs," the landmark pays loving homage to the artist, who died in 2016. Cohen is also the subject of a second mural — a mere nine stories high — on rue Saint-Dominique in the Plateau. A local artist named Kevin Ledo painted it during the 2017 MURAL festival.

We just missed this year's iteration of that annual fest, which took place June 8 to 18 and added artworks along boulevard Saint-Laurent, aka the Main. Next time in the city, we'll consider taking a guided tour of the street's murals old and new, which MURAL offers in conjunction with Montréal tour operator Spade & Palacio.

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• Courtesy Of Olivier Bousquet/MU
• "Hot Summer Night" by David Guinn and Phillip Adams

I also want to seek out MU's first mural production of 2023, a tribute to celebrated local cartoonist Michel Rabagliati. On rue Saint-Denis, it's the site of his first apartment and where his autobiographical comic strip character, "Paul," was born. Designed by Rabagliati himself, the mural is a black-and-white cartoon aptly titled "Paul en appartement." As a comics fangirl, I think it's time I learned to read them in French.

Tourism officials rightly tout Montréal's artwork as a draw for visitors. Doyle applauds its effects on residents, suggesting the city's "open-air museum" is about more than beautification. It's democratic and accessible, it's educational, and it contributes to local change, she said.

"We see people taking care of [their] area, taking pride, planting flowers. There's less illegal trash. We see wall owners planting trees, bushes, flowers, improving the lighting," Doyle observed.

"Many things are triggered by the changes that the art provokes," she concluded. "It's the opposite of the broken-window theory."