St James United Church
The St James United Church on Saint Catherine Street had a problem. Surrounded on all sides by a cacophony of neon signs advertising clubs, restaurants, theatres, and strip joints, the church simply couldn’t compete for attention. Worse, since 1927, this Gothic Revival church had been hidden away behind a commercial development of stores intended to provide income for the church’s upkeep. Twenty years later, the church embraced the promotional language of Rue Ste-Catherine by commissioning a 20ft high neon spectacular, designed and built by Claude Néon.
If these kinds of glorious period signs are now rarer than hen’s teeth, religious signs in this mode are rarer still. To his great credit, when the commercial development was finally torn down in 2005, the Rev Arlen Bonnar took steps to save the sign. Carefully crated and stored in the church’s basement, the sign lay dormant until, in 2010, the Montréal Signs Project began a conversation with the Rev Bonnar and the trustees about its future. We’re delighted to report that the sign is now restored and illuminated, and will be visible at the MEM-Centre des mémoires montréalaises when it opens this Fall.