Alternative Montreal metro map celebrating women’s contributions
Posted March 7, 2025 12:13 pm.
Last Updated March 7, 2025 12:14 pm.
“Next stop: Gabrielle Roy!”
Researcher and author Chantal Ringuet has teamed up with the Université de Montréal (UdeM) and the Société de transport de Montréal (STM) to create an all-female metro map.
It’s a way of marking International Women’s Day and a way of highlighting women’s low representation in Montreal’s toponymy.
The “alternative” metro map was created to name the 68 stations after female personalities and to highlight their contribution to Montreal life.
Currently, the Montreal metro has only three stations named after women, two saints and a queen: Villa-Maria, Côte-Sainte-Catherine and Square-Victoria.
The map will be displayed in the metro network and is also available on the Montréal, ville de femmes website.
Women underrepresented in public space
In the past, the City of Montreal has recognized that women have been historically underrepresented in its toponymy.
In 2016, the city created Toponym’Elles to build up a bank of female names for new places to be named.
At the time, only six percent of streets and places in the city had a female name, compared to 51 percent for male names, the rest relating to family names or neutral names.
Over the years, special attention has been paid to the designation of public spaces, and today the proportion of female names has slowly increased to 7.8 percent.
