The artwork is situated in Place De La Dauversière; its axial position in relation to the door to Montréal city hall, on the other side of Rue Notre-Dame, contributes to its symbolic reading. It is composed of a wide horizontal rectangular panel made of Corten steel, the oxidized surface of which bears pierced inscriptions that give a short historical description, as well as the names and ages of the members of the first family in Ville-Marie. In the evening, light comes through the clefts in the letters, which are reflected on a tempered-glass plate placed on the ground. Articulated around a symbolic representation of the door, open and closed, the artwork creates a link between past and present, between de La Dauversière’s original vision and today’s images retransmitted by the glass plate.

The creation of Montréal was an inspiration of Jérôme Le Royer, sieur de La Dauversière (1597–1659), and its foundation was mainly a missionary undertaking: education and healthcare were to be provided to Indigenous peoples, and their conversion and sedentarization were to bring about the emergence of a new Christianity. Jérôme Le Royer, sieur de La Dauversière, a tax collector by profession, devoted much of his life and fortune to the realization of this mission, presiding over the early fate of Montréal without ever setting foot there or even seeing its shores. On 17 December 1640, the Compagnie des Cent-Associés ceded the island of Montréal to Jérôme Le Royer, sieur de La Dauversière.