EmoriaCustom art prints and star maps
Maps · Collection 01

Montreal poster, drawn from the real map

45.5019°N / 73.5674°W · Canada

An island, with the whole city inside it. In the middle of the built fabric, one green patch is the size of a neighbourhood: it is a hill, and the whole island takes its bearings from it.

You choose the framing, the palette and the words of the caption. The work is drawn from real data, then printed to order in the workshop closest to you.

Compose my Montreal poster
What the map shows

An island held by two waters, and a hill in the middle

Follow the outline. The St Lawrence takes the bottom and the right; the Rivière des Prairies runs along the north and separates the island from another one, Laval, which fills the top of the sheet. The two meet in a lake to the west and close the shape. That is the moment you understand at a glance that Montreal is an island, which no street view ever tells you. Downtown presses in south of the hill, against the river bank, and the street grids tilt gently from one neighbourhood to the next without ever quite agreeing.

Read on

One thing is missing, and it deserves to be named: the Lachine Canal. Fourteen kilometres cut to get past the rapids, the work the city owes its position to as the gateway to the interior of the continent, and at this scale it does not draw. A body of water that narrow stays below the threshold of the background, whatever the palette. So the map gives you the island and the hill, and withholds what made the fortune of both. The metro and the rail are not part of it either: they never are.

Compose your own

What suits Montreal

The palette

The subject is an outline, the island's, and the first requirement is that it be visible: take the water frank and deep enough that the shape closes in one piece, western tip included. Then comes the hill, and one point needs making plain. There is only one vegetation ink, the same for every green on the sheet: you cannot give the mountain a colour that sets it apart from the parks. It sets itself apart another way, and that is more than enough, since it is the one green mass of that size caught inside the continuous built fabric, while the others line the northern river, at the edge. So give the green a value strong enough to hold everywhere, and the hill will stand out on its own. The built fabric is better kept to a single value: the grids already tilt from one neighbourhood to the next, and that is movement enough.

The framing

Portrait, and the whole island on the sheet: that comes first, because the island is the subject. The price is paid twice. The western tip only just holds and the eastern end grazes the edge; and above all the hill shrinks to a patch, where one step closer it would make a mass. The choice is between an island and a mountain, and the research file settles it for the island. Come closer if you would rather have the reverse, but you will lose both ends, and with them the idea that holds the whole city together.

The caption

The title, one line under it, the coordinates. A street number, the name of a bridge, the year you crossed for good: on an island, the caption line says which side of the water you were on.

The sheet
Subject
Montreal, Canada
Palette
Pierre grise
Map style
Clean and Detailed
Layout
Bar
Typeface
Minimal
Framing
Zoom 9.2
Fade at the edges
0%
Format
Portrait
The palette of this poster

Pierre grise

Sixteen inks, in the configurator’s order. It is not in the catalogue, but you will find it in the palette library, filed under its material.

  • Background
  • Water
  • Greenery
  • Built-up areas
  • Roads
  • Buildings
  • Text
  • Motorways
  • Main roads
  • Secondary roads
  • Minor roads
  • Streets
  • Service roads
  • Paths
  • Railways
  • Borders
Compose with this paletteStart from it to make your own

Opens the colour workshop with these 16 inks in place: change one, keep the rest.

It will wait in your account, ready for any piece.

What the drawing tells

Three dates that explain the city

1642A missionary colony, on a 17 May

Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve and Jeanne Mance founded Ville-Marie on the island of Montreal, a missionary colony of the Société Notre-Dame. The City dates its birth from that day. It was not a trading port but a mission, placed at the point where the river stops being navigable: the geography that justified the settlement is still the one you are reading, even if the reason given for it has changed twice since.

1825Fourteen kilometres to get round some rapids

Montreal merchants had the Lachine Canal dug, fourteen kilometres of it, to bypass the rapids that block the St Lawrence. At the head of a network of canals reaching the Great Lakes, it made the city the gateway to the interior of the continent, and its banks became the country's first industrial corridor. It is the most consequential work in this history, and the only one not on the print.

1876The man who made Central Park drew the mountain

After three years of expropriations, two hundred hectares and a loan of one million dollars, the City gave Frederick Law Olmsted the design of Mount Royal park, opened on 24 May. The green patch you see in the middle of the weave is therefore not a scrap of forest left standing by chance: it is a park bought, drawn and paid dearly for, by the same hand as the one in New York.

Before ordering

The four questions people ask

Can I choose any place, any date?

Yes. The search covers the whole world, from a capital to a hamlet. For the Sky collection, any date works, past or future: the sky is calculated.

What sizes do you offer?

From 21 × 29.7 cm to 84.1 × 118.9 cm, that is A4 to A0, portrait or landscape depending on the material. Every size is shown with its price in the editor.

What materials do you offer?

Four, from the barest to the most dressed.

  • Matte fine art paperA 200 gsm art paper with a deep matte finish: the bare print, to frame as you please.
  • Wooden hangersThe print suspended between two wooden hangers, ready to hang, in the spirit of studio posters.
  • The classic frameThe print mounted under acrylic glass in a slim frame, assembled by hand, delivered ready to hang.
  • Framed canvasThe piece printed on canvas, stretched over a wooden stretcher bar and set in a frame: a gallery presence.
How long does it take?

Allow 1 to 4 working days for making, up to 7 for hand-assembled frames and canvases, then 1 to 6 working days in transit with standard delivery.

Digital editions are available immediately: the file of your piece is emailed to you as soon as you order.

All the questions

Your Montreal

The bridge you took, the slope of the mountain you walked up, the neighbourhood whose grid leans a different way. The island is the same for everyone. Where you looked at it from is not.

Compose my Montreal poster