At midday on 26 April 1896, Charlotte Millicent disembarked her train car and stepped onto the platform at Windsor Station in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The steam and smoke from the locomotive hung in the air, giving the atmosphere a hazy quality under the diffused light of the pitched train shed roof. As she passed the conductor, Millicent asked him how to reach Lagauchetière Street. He instructed her to take the hallway to the far left of the general waiting room, out of the main exit onto Osborne Street, turn right, and cross Windsor Street toward Lagauchtière Street. Millicent passed through a set of doors and found herself in a cavernous room with high ceilings, hardwood floors and rhythmic archways supported by six ornate polished granite columns. She followed the flow of well-dressed passengers through a corridor to the left. Millicent was struck by the sudden change from a wide open space to a narrow corridor.

Through a wide archway on her right was the ladies’ waiting room, which contained a fireplace framed by ceramic tile, and emitted a warm glow. Women dressed in hats, satin and furs sat on wooden chairs with plush leather seats at carved wooden tables. Some women cast their eyes up at Millicent as she walked past, over their novels and embroidery projects. The sound and aroma of the crackling fire gave way to damp air that smelled like wet stone and horse droppings. As Millicent exited the station through the archway onto Osborne Street, she locked eyes with the stare of a small face, its visage twisted into a grin, nestled among oak leaves, carved into the decorative column of the archway. Millicent reoriented herself, crossed Windsor Street, then Cathedral Street, and headed down Lagauchetière Street toward the Montreal Sheltering Home.

Taylor’s 1903 plan of the Montreal Maternity Hospital indicates that the hospital was supposed to contain thirty teaching beds organized into public and private wards, case rooms, a small operating theatre, and a large hall for teaching. Since this plan was produced two years before construction of the new hospital began, it is unclear how the hospital was eventually organized. However, looking at Taylor’s original plan for the hospital along with photographs of the hospital and descriptions from the archive sheds some light on the layout of the new hospital.

According to the Minute Book, there were two main public wards, eight private wards, and “separation” wards for women who were thought to be contagious. A photo album from 1925 (the last year that Taylor’s MMH was in use) shows a sun-filled and tidy private ward, which showcases a thriving fern (pictured above); and a sterile, streamlined delivery room for private patients, where the covered radiators and mirror-like glass surfaces promise a sanitary and safe childbirth. In terms of site, design, material, and spatial organization, the new hospital clearly signified a departure from the charitable origins of the MMH.

This thesis provides an analysis of Montréal-based artist MissMe’s series of wheat-pastes, Vandals (2014 -) in relation to spatial theory, feminist theory, and feminist geography. I argue that through feminist imagery and spatial occupation of sites around Montréal’s Plateau Mont-Royal and Mile End neighbourhoods, MissMe’s Vandals ephemerally transform inherently patriarchal built space and highlight how the gendered body influences one’s experience of the city. Through examples of site-specific urban interventions by feminist artists, the groupe Mauve, Suzanne Lacy and Valie Export, I establish continuity and explore the debt between contemporary feminist street art, and second-wave feminist art that takes place in the city.

Mauve, Lacy, Export instrumentalized the built environment to broadcast feminist messages. Further, they used their female bodies in the built environment to refute the supposed gender neutrality of the city. In this way, these second-wave feminist artists ephemerally transformed their strategically chosen places into feminist spaces. Continuing the radical exploration established by second-wave feminist artists, MissMe’s Vandals materially occupy locations in Montréal. Through analyzing the visual tactics specific to the Vandal, and considering the socio-spatial specificity of these characters within the Plateau Mont-Royal and Mile End districts, I argue that the Vandal emerges as symbols of resistance within the built environment, temporarily transforming patriarchal place into feminist space.