Gay Village’s iconic rainbow-ball canopy to be retired

The rows of multi-coloured balls hanging over a long stretch of SteCatherine St. in the city’s Gay Village will be taken down at the end of the summer.

The art installation, created by Claude Cormier, an award-winning landscape architect, debuted in 2011 with a series of pink balls hung over a one-kilometre stretch of the roadway in the heart of the village. Last year, those balls were replaced by 170,000 multi-coloured balls designed to look like a rainbow. The rainbow, installed as part of Montreal 375th anniversary celebrations, was titled “18 shades of gay.”

“After eight wonderful years, it’s time for our balls to retire. Wanna protest to keep them or you have any new ideas for the future?” the Village Gai de Montréal posted on its Facebook page on Thursday.

On Friday, Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante weighed in on Facebook, writing that she would prefer to see the rainbow remain up. She invited Montrealers to express their own opinions.

Cormier told Radio-Canada on Friday that he made the decision to have the balls removed in September because it was never his intention to keep them up for long. He said the plastic balls would not age well after being exposed to the sun and the rain. Cormier’s opinion appeared to close debate on the issue for the association of merchants based in the Gay Village, which had a say in whether the display should remain.