Bronze sculptures on Montreal's Peel Street connect Indigenous history, nature and urban life

Peel Street is one of the few Montreal arteries connecting two of the city's foremost natural landmarks: Mount Royal and the St. Lawrence River. Today, the unveiling of four bronze sculptures marked the beginning of a trail meant to acknowledge the city's connections to nature and its Indigenous history. 

The sculptures are intricate spheres created by artists MC Snow and Kyra Revenko. They are installed on Peel near the corner of Smith Street (by the Peel Basin, a body of water between two locks on the Lachine Canal) and will be part of 11 thematic stations along 2.5 kilometres expected to reach the street's northern end this autumn, where the mountain's forested walking trails begin. 

They are accompanied by an audio guide available on the app Portrait Sonore.

The artworks were inspired by the Kanien'kehá:ka ceremony of thanks, Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen, which can be translated to "the words that come before all others" in English.

Ratsénhaienhs Ross Montour, one of 12 elected chiefs on the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake, said that, once complete, the trail along Peel Street will represent the different parts of the Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen. 

"What it says is that whenever we come together — it may be to start the day, it may be to celebrate, it may be to resolve difficult relationships — what you need to do first is to call to mind our relationship to the natural world in a way that will bring our minds together," Montour said in an interview at the site Tuesday. 

The place where the first of the trail's sculptures were unveiled represents an industrialized part of the city's natural world, the St. Lawrence Seaway, Montour said. But the trail will end "back in the natural world as it exists on the island of Montreal, which we call Tiohtià:ke," he said, referring to the mountain. 

MC Snow, one of the two artists behind the works, is from Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) territory of Kahnawà:ke. The other, Kyra Revenko, is a non-Indigenous artist living in Quebec. Montour said the two artists were invited to come together, "engage with one another and show a vision of two different peoples."

Montour called the collaboration an exercise in reconciliation and of two world views interacting and exploring "how we've come to occupy the same space."

Michael Rice, a Kanien'kehá:ka historian who was a consultant on the project, said it had been about five years in the making. The idea for the trail was prompted by archeological excavations at Peel and Sherbrooke streets between 2016 and 2019, which uncovered the remnants of an Iroquois village dating back about 600 years. 

"It's very important that it happened today, the 20th, the day before National Indigenous People's Day because a lot of people don't realize that we've always been here, that we're still here," Rice said. 

One of the sculptures by Snow depicts fish carrying several small spheres within them, which Montour said he interpreted as eggs, symbolizing future life and what is to come. 

That one of the first sculptures in the project, so close to the river, deals with water hit home for Montour, who grew up on the banks of the St. Lawrence in Kahnawà:ke before the community was cut off from the river by the Seaway in the 1950s. 

"I have seen the water go from clear and seeing the fish swimming in the water, to where you can't see anything now," Montour said. A bay in Kahnawà:ke has become choked with weeds sprouting from agricultural runoff and the lack of current caused by the Seaway. 

He said the first step to recognizing the damage humans can and have caused to nature is acknowledging its existence in the first place. 

To Montour, the sculptures offer a reminder to "the people here that are going about their lives in a very busy city, that we need to think about the natural world."