stones and cans and comic books in a kettle

One night, a couple of years ago while I was making dinner, I heard an an interview with the singer-songwriter Allison Russell on the radio. I was unaware of her work until then and at one point it was mentioned that she grew up in Montreal. That was nice but not overly suprising. To quote the early episode of This American Life devoted to Canadians: We walk among you. Then she mentioned that she'd gone to the same high (secondary) school I went to: Moving in New Directions, or simply MIND, which I was not expecting.

Last year, Allison Russell performed at the Montreal International Jazz Festival and she gave a shout-out to the city where she grew up but also to MIND specifically. It was a pretty great moment. The story of Russell's childhood can only be described as grim, unfair and harrowing but to hear that the school played a small role in making an otherwise awful set of circumstances better, or at least less awful, means that MIND is still working. When I attended, the school's reputation was that it was the place where drop-outs and drug fiends ended up. While there were plenty of both it ignored the school's real purpose: It was a school for people who would have otherwise perished at a big normal high school, whether through their own actions or those forced upon them by others.

MIND was (is) an actual school with a prescribed cirriculum and grades and all the normal school stuff. It was also the first time I had ever been in a school setting where the teachers treated their students if not as equals than at least as actual people, albeit teenagers. Simple things like addressing one another on a first name basis or a tolerance, within reason (and with real consequences), for unexcused absenses. It felt as though the staff had an awareness, and even some degree of sympathy, for what a monumental pain in the ass going to school as a teenager can be. We didn't have free reign but we were afforded just enough freedom to let us understand what we would, could or might do with it. If that sometimes meant we would stage a talent show where someone would have their head shaved, covered in whipping cream and dunked in a bowl of Cheerios then, well, more power to us. It is hard to overstate how important those little things were.

This is how every school should be but it wasn't then and still isn't now. To hear parents tell the story the stress and hassle of attending high school as a teenager is even worse that it was before. I have not maintained strong ties with MIND. I do not return for class reunions. I am simply happy, and proud, to know that it is still there and still a place where people can attend school and graduate feeling like an institution which was otherwise thrust upon them actually worked in their favour. So I decided to design a coat of arms for the school. To be clear: MIND has nothing to do with this. It is MIND's 50th anniversay this year so it was, in effect, a fun bit of high school fan fiction.

If you are from Montreal the foreground and the background are pretty straightforward: The Saint Lawrence River and Mont Royal, respectively. In the middle ground I wanted something to represent the actual people who've lived in Montreal past and present but something a bit more nuanced and reflective of the city's day-to-day reality than its current flag which might as well just be a map of England for all its romanticized depictions of Anglo-Franco, Anglo-Irish, Anglo-Scottish not to mention Protestant and Catholic relations. It was only nine years ago that the city added an image of a white pine to its flag in a long overdue nod to the First Nations.

Canada and Quebec, both in their founding and their contemporary manifestations, have always been nations of come from aways. That's hard for some people to admit, particularly when they don't also want to own up to what being a founding nation meant in concrete (and human) terms for the First Nations who, you know, were already here long before the Europeans showed up. That being said, there aren't many good design options when it comes to representing everyone. After thinking it over for a while I settled on the one thing in common that everyone in Montreal, regardless of their background, shares: A love of eating and of eating together around the table. This is by no means a characteristic unique to Montreal but it is certainly a defining characteristic of Montreal.

The four circles in the middle ground, then, symbolize four plates around a dinner table. One for the First Nations. One for the settlers (colonialists). One for everyone who has come since first contact. And one for all the people who were simply born in to it all. It is also a nice way to represent the diversity of people who end up attending MIND. In this way those four plates could just as easily be used as the symbology for an updated coat of arms for the city of Montreal, the province of Quebec or even Canada as a whole, but one thing at a time.

The motto is a Latin translation of the phrase stones and cans and comic books in a kettle from the Bran Van 3000 song Montréal. I am hard pressed to think of a better motto for MIND. Obviously, the circles could also just be seen as bagels. That wouldn't be wrong either.