Mount Royal Cross turns 100

The cross on Mount Royal is celebrating a milestone: it's turning 100.

It was first lit up on Christmas Eve 1924 and continues to attract visitors today.

Standing 33 metres high, and 10 metres wide, it creates a big impression for those seeing it for the first time.

Heather MacDermott, a tourist from New Brunswick, said the metal structure doesn’t show its age.

“Well, it’s magnificent, it’s huge,” she said.

French tourist Julien Alcelay said he wanted to see the structure close up. “It’s my first time on Mount Royal and it’s really beautiful,” he said.

The structure has been lighting up the night sky for 100 years and is an iconic fixture of the city landscape according to Heritage Montreal’s Dinu Bumbaru.

“It’s part of the picture because it’s a very visible thing,” he said. “But of course over the years its presence has had different meanings.”

A wooden cross was first erected at the site in 1643 by Montreal co-founder Paul de Chomedy de Maisonneuve, after the city was spared from a flood.

While its roots are catholic, it was the nationalist group, the Société Saint-Jean Baptiste, that launched a fundraising campaign to build what we see today.

“It’s actually donations that were collected by the school children in Montreal that paid for the cross. and it's the dominion bridge that built it. so, somehow, it's connected all sorts of people,” Bumbaru said.

Over the years it's been the site of protests, and some have questioned whether a religious symbol has its place in a secular city.

But park user Christophe Divry said that its significance transcends religion.

“it's part of the history of Montreal, and, and it's, you know, strongly linked to the root of what Montreal is, Ville Marie,” he said. “It’s related to the impact that Catholicism had on the extension of Montreal. So having a cross here is actually, a very, very good symbol, of, of all the history in Montreal.

And Bumbaru believes the cross will continue to be a symbol in the future too, as long as it’s properly cared for.

“It will depend on the steel itself and, the rest of the care that is given to it, it's like the bridges, you know, and the infrastructure of that nature,” he said.