Symphony orchestra, yoga, guided hikes highlight Mount-Royal Park’s 150th anniversary celebrations

A symphony orchestra, public-art exhibit and ice time with Montréal Victoire players are all part of the festivities for the 150th anniversary of Mount-Royal Park.

The City of Montreal unveiled its programming Monday for the celebration, with many events taking place this summer and others scheduled for the fall and next year.

“It bounds east, west, north, south. It’s like the centre of our city and I think we should be proud of it,” said Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada,

The more than 70 activities – a mix of music, artistic performances, lectures, guided hikes, outdoor yoga and more – are designed to celebrate the nature and history of the mountain and its park, which was designated a heritage site in 2005.

“For 150 years, Mount-Royal Park has brought Montrealers together and holds a unique place in our collective history,” the mayor said. “This anniversary is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate our mountain, to reaffirm our commitment to protecting it and ensuring its vitality for future generations.

“And because an anniversary like this deserves to be commemorated, we also want to create a lasting legacy with a public artwork that will mark this significant moment.”

That public-art exhibit – about 20 artworks and 50 archival images – was inaugurated Monday. The art and images are primarily at the monument to Sir George-Étienne Cartier, the Beaver Lake pavilion, the Smith House and the Mount-Royal chalet.

That’s one of many items part of the months-long celebration that includes:

• Pop Spirit, a two-and-a-half hour yoga session on the Kondiaronk belvedere (June 6)
• A guided walk focusing on two iconic Montreal landmarks, led by Heritage Montreal (June 13)
• Marie Chouinard en Caravane, a performance by 11 dancers (June 18)
• A symphony orchestra by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Orchestre Métropolitain (Aug. 5)
• Ancestra Lumina, an immersive nighttime two-kilometre walk in the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery, highlighting Quebec’s history and culture (this fall)
• Free skate with Montréal Victore players at the Jeanne-Mance skating rink (winter 2027)

The full program is available online.

Preserving Mount-Royal

Héritage Montréal says Montrealers themselves have been the main driving force behind the mountain’s preservation. The group points to decades of citizen-led campaigns that helped protect Mount-Royal at a time when they say its preservation from big development projects wasn’t a guarantee.

“For example, in the ‘80s, there was a project of a tower, and the citizens came back together and said, ‘no,’” recounted Taïka Baillargeon, the organization’s assistant policy director.

Those efforts eventually contributed to more protections for the mountain in the form of heritage status granted in 2005.

“It’s a story of democracy, really, the story of the Mount-Royal.”

And as Mount-Royal looks to its next century and a half, Baillargeon says conservation efforts linked to its ecosystem and aging heritage buildings will be needed.

“It’s continuously fragilized by construction, density, population, etcetera, etcetera.”

Indigenous activist Philippe Meilleur is looking to see more Indigenous history reflected on the mountain.

“Our parks and places where we navigate have a lot of European markers but almost nothing about Indigenous people,” said Meilleur, the executive director of Native Montreal.

He says more cultural markers should be installed on the mountain to acknowledge the people who were there first.

“I’d like to bring a day camp here with a bunch of Indigenous children and they would be able to see themselves in this park,” he said.

“Of course, the mountain itself is absolutely outstanding,” added Baillargeon. “But the history of the connection between communities and the mountain is what we celebrate with this history of the park.

–With files from Zachary Cheung