Traditionally, North American cities have been synonymous with their car-oriented streets, with highways invariably cutting through their centers. In recent years, however, policies have undergone a complete 180-degree shift. For evidence, look no further than Montreal’s Bonaventure Expressway.

Originally constructed to link the city with the 1967 Expo fairgrounds, the 11-lane highway was partially torn down in the mid 2010’s, giving way to a brand-new esplanade replete with trees and footpaths in between. Alongside its greenery, the Bonaventure Park also boasts a series of sculptures, including a rather bizarre structure that holds far more than first meets the eye.

Inaugurated in 2017 as part of Montreal’s 375^th anniversary, the sculpture “Source” was designed by Barcelona-born artist Jaume Plensa, whose works adorn multiple cities around the world. The white-painted mesh comprises hundreds of pieces of stainless steel, interwoven together to form a shape of a squatting human, about 10 meter tall (32 feet) – spacious enough for a group of people to stand within its confines.

If you look more closely, you’ll see that these seemingly meaningless fragments of metal are in fact a medley of sculpted letters from eight different manuscripts – Latin, Chinese, Hindi, Greek, Cyrillic, Arab, Japanese and Hebrew. According to Plensa, the metaphor is that just as our body is composed of individual cells, letters form words, which in turn create sentences.

Moreover, Plensa’s work pays homage to the city’s mosaic of cultures, as throughout its history, immigrants from various countries settled here, each of which contributing to the ethnically diverse melting pot that is Montreal.

As it turns out, the allegory doesn’t end there, as the name “Source” carries its fair share of hidden meanings. For one, in both English and French, the word stands for a source of water, reflecting the city’s centuries-old reliance on the nearby St. Lawrence River as well as several canals. Secondly, the word also embodies the affinity of the Mohawk people for their ancestral land, where they lived long before Montreal was founded.

The whimsical statue is located along Wellington St., wedged between the lanes of Blvd Robert-Bourassa. To the west lies one of its street-wide siblings – Dendrites, a pair of rusty stairways created by artist Michel de Broin.