Fest illuminates Montreal’s 375th anniversary

Paris is called “The City of Light,” but this year, Montreal seems hellbent on seizing that title for itself. Everywhere you walk in the central sections of this Canadian city — which is the most populous municipality in the province of Quebec — light shows project flickering images or beam flashy videos across buildings and billboards.

All these illuminations — some stately, some eerie, but most merely fun — were created to celebrate the 375th anniversary of Montreal’s founding as a settlement by the French.

In the Old Montreal area, the “Cite Memoire” instillation throws ghostly scenes and characters from the region’s rough and tumble past onto its stone facades, or casts them down its spooky alleyways. Up in the slicker shopping meccas of Saint Catherine St. in downtown Montreal, bursts of color kaleidoscope over the 19th century Christ Church Cathedral, while on busy Saint Laurent St., a whimsical swing set of colored orbs rocks back and forth, as goofy synthesizer music provides an impish soundtrack.

It might sound weird to toast to 375 years, but you can’t blame the locals for not wanting to wait another quarter-century to reach their 400th anniversary. Instead, they went big for 2017, marking it with festivals, concerts, food events, museum exhibitions and all those outdoor light shows.

What’s the connection between Montreal and all this lumiere? Maybe it has to do with the city’s bitter cold winters, and hard architecture, two features that could use all the warm colors and animation they can get. You’ll find more of them at a show called “Aura,” which tarts up in the inside of the most revered religious institution in town, the Notre-Dame Basilica.

Then, starting in May, illuminations will anoint the city’s iconic Jacques-Cartier Bridge with patterns and images depicting the seasons, the traffic patterns, as well as events from around the city. Those last two projects come courtesy of the Montrealbased Moment Factory, a multimedia entertainment studio best known for its innovative designs for concert tours for acts like Madonna, Jay Z, Nine Inch Nails and many more.

As the city marks its own anniversary this year, I also have a personal Montreal date to celebrate. My dad grew up here and my family made periodic pilgrimages during my youth. Fifty summers ago, my family brought me to see Expo 67, a world’s

Don’t miss the charms of Old Montreal, or the light show “Aura” inside the Notre-Dame Basilica (inset r.). Sunday, April 16, 2017

To mark Montreal’s 375th anniversary, art installations feature characters and images being projected on facades of buildings, like one below.