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As a prelude to their own map-making assignment, students watched Jean Palardy’s short documentary Montreal by Night (1947). Following the screening, they participated in a one-hour in-class workshop, during which they worked in groups to create sketch maps of the Montreal depicted in the film.

For decades, garage leagues have been a vital part of Montreal’s hockey culture, providing adults, mostly men with a space to play, socialize, and unwind after work. More than just recreational games, these leagues foster camaraderie and maintain a deep-rooted tradition of community hockey. However, they are now under threat. Arenas are closing earlier, prioritizing other uses, and making it increasingly difficult for these leagues to secure ice time (City of Montreal 2024). At the same time, youth hockey participation has declined by 35 percent in recent years, with the rising cost of the sport contributing to its decreasing accessibility (Whyno 2024). While hockey remains the most popular sport among adults in Canada, it ranks only third among minors, reflecting a generational shift in engagement (Narrative Research 2023). With fewer young players feeding into the game, adult hockey remains a crucial lifeline for keeping the culture alive. If arenas continue shifting away from supporting garage leagues, a core aspect of Montreal’s identity risks fading away. This map highlights where these leagues still persist, the challenges they face, and the urgent need to protect this essential part of local hockey culture.

This map catalogs restaurants and cafés open past midnight classified by date in 25-year intervals, shedding light on the oldest institutions still in operation. This approach revealed a correlation between the restaurants' location and proximity to public transit: night food spots increasingly clustered around the transit axes created by in the introduction of the underground metro in 1966, concentrating and replacing tramway routes as the predominant method of public transit.

The map also emphasizes the luminous impact of these night food establishments and how they attract customers through their street lighting. Two types of lighting were identified, catering to different clientele. On one hand, a warm lighting style—represented in yellow—marks places offering a warm ambiance that encourages customers to stay longer. On the other hand, a brighter lighting style—represented in white—highlights places that encouraged higher customer turnover. In this way, these dining spaces contribute to the nighttime vitality around metro stations, adding comfort and safety to the surrounding neighborhoods.

Anand's urban map identifies Montreal's working establishments during the night (excluding restaurants and bars) and their proximity, or lack thereof, to grocery stores as a measure of food security. Different biomes are used to depict access to grocery stores throughout the 24-hour cycle: the desert represents the lowest access to grocery stores, the forest represents the highest access to grocery stores, and the rainforest represents access to grocery stores specifically at night. Businesses and establishments operational throughout the night are depicted as animals: bats are police and fire stations, owls are airports, mice are slaughterhouses, possums are factories, and the fireflies are all the late-night grocery stores operational past midnight.

Montreal's queer community hosts a unique constellation of night care spaces, revealed through this mapping project. These 28 identified venues are not typical nightlife locales but environments where support, visibility, and community bonding occur. Ranging in activity, these spaces are predominantly temporary and operate under the radar, relying on word-of-mouth for promotion. While often impermanent, they cater to various segments of the 2SLGBTQIA+ population, including youth and the elderly, ensuring inclusivity in their offerings throughout the year. The selection of these organizations and collectives was meticulously based on criteria such as visibility, fundraising, providing support and information, cultivating the community, targeting action for community members, and a specific orientation towards sapphic, trans, and BIPOC individuals. Despite their often invisible nature, these spaces are vibrantly present and play a crucial role in the strength and resilience of the community. The ephemerality of these venues does not diminish their significance; rather, it highlights a dynamic network that, although not always seen, is continuously active and influential.

In the accompanying drawing, an axonometric volum etry of the map of southern Montreal is presented, depicting a virtual room where various members of the queer community navigate through the night. They engage in diverse activities, fostering and cultivating their bonds. This visual representation not only illustrates the physical locations but also celebrates the lively and communal spirit that thrives within these after-hours gatherings.

In Hindu philosophy, the body is seen as a temple—an entity that must be nourished through discipline, devotion, and self-care. Using the game Operation as a base map, this map draws parallels between the body and the city. Just as the game highlights different parts of the human body that require precision and care, this map identifies Hindu temples not only as places of worship but as crucial community hubs that provide holistic care, addressing physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. Each temple functions as an organ, contributing to the health of the city through services that sustain not only individuals but also the broader community even beyond religious practice. They offer wellness programs, cultural activities, and nourishment through prasadam, the sanctified free food distributed in temples, highlighting alternative forms of care rooted in diaspora, spirituality, and shared responsibility.

This mapping project shows that accessibility to transportation and the presence of institutions in Montreal influence the distribution of late-night dining options in the city. Most restaurants are concentrated in the city center and are open until 3 or 5 a.m., with some open 24/7. The data shows a strong correlation between the number of late-night restaurants and nearby metro stations, suggesting that these establishments serve as temporary waiting spaces when the metro is closed between 1 and 5 a.m. In addition, clusters of restaurants near hospitals and universities suggest that they cater to night shift workers, students, and hospital visitors.

In recent years, the economic crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a decline in late-night dining options in Montreal. With the exception of large chains such as McDonalds and Burger King, the city’s late-night dining scene has become increasingly limited. This decline in diversity reflects the economic challenges faced by many establishments, which has led to a lack of variety in nighttime food options. This suggests that accessible public spaces may be more in demand than a wide range of food options in the evening.

“Pinballing for a Bed: Mapping Montreal’s Exclusionary Public Spaces at Night” highlights exclusionary public spaces after dark by mapping various stories of exclusion drawn from headlines found in news articles and digital media. The map categorizes these stories into themes such as the library, stores, subways, transit, warming centers, shelters, restaurants, parks, camps, and neighbors, revealing common patterns within the city’s spaces. While the map does not claim to document every instance of exclusion, it paints a vivid picture of public perception and attitudes toward homelessness and the presence of homeless individuals in public spaces. The result is a map that illustrates the relentless and exclusionary experiences faced by those attempting to find a place to rest, essentially, pinballing for a bed.

"Glittering Sinfulness: The Sanitization of Montreal’s Red-Light District" traces the transformation of Montreal’s Red-Light District into the Quartier des Spectacles, revealing how the city commodified its illicit past while erasing the communities that once occupied these spaces. The base layer of my map is a 1943 health department report marking bawdy houses and rooming houses where venereal diseases were recorded. This connects to Mayor Adhémar Raynault’s crackdown on brothels in response to STI outbreaks among military personnel—a decision that led to a tourism collapse, exposing the city’s economic reliance on sex work.

Overlaying this is a contemporary Quartier des Spectacles map, where culture is now leveraged as an engine of economic development, yet its branding borrows heavily from the allure of the former Red-Light District. The city appropriates its “glittering sinfulness” as a marketing tool while displacing the sex workers and marginalized communities who once defined the area. My composition also reconstructs the working-class urban fabric of the district, illustrating how its designation as a vice hub stemmed less from inherent criminality and more from policing patterns. The layering of headlines, photographs, and archival elements reveals a history of regulation, appropriation, and urban erasure.

"Mapping Cultural Amnesia: Selective Suppression of the Past in Lebanese Practices of Placemaking in Montreal" focuses on Ahuntsic-Cartierville, the Montreal neighborhood with the highest Lebanese population concentration and showcases how nostalgic diasporic activities provide comfort and familiarity in a new environment. This mapping project highlights the organic formation of diasporic communities and their significance, contrasting them with immigrant and refugee institutions that are more dispersed across the city. Montreal’s strong Lebanese presence4 provides the community comfort, allowing access to Lebanese products, traditions, and religious institutions. Maronite churches, for example, serve not just as places of worship but also as cultural and social hubs. Restaurants, coffee shops, and bakeries transform at night into spaces of care where food, music, and traditions are shared.

"Who Gets to Sleep in the City?: Mapping Housing Precarity and Spatial Exclusion in Montreal" maps the spatial inequalities of Montreal’s housing crisis, revealing how access to shelter is shaped by policy, development, and social networks. By splitting the analysis into two maps, Who Gets to Stay? and Who Gets to Rest?, this work highlights the structural forces dictating who remains in the city and where housing precarity is most visible.

Who Gets to Stay? traces gentrification as a force of displacement, mapping historical squats as moments of resistance. These spaces, Overdale, Préfontaine, St-Henri, illustrate how working-class and racialized communities have fought for their right to remain. Today, gentrified neighborhoods continue to push out low-income residents, reshaping the city’s social fabric.

The second map, Who Gets to Rest?, examines the availability of shelter and the realities of hidden homelessness. Radiating circles highlight how shelters are overwhelmed, while racialized neighborhoods like Côte-des-Neiges and Parc-Extension show lower levels of visible homelessness but higher reliance on informal community networks. These findings challenge conventional definitions of homelessness by revealing survival strategies beyond the shelter system.