Place de l’An-2000 is occupied by a sculptural grouping composed of three elements evoking the advent of the new millennium and the rural past of Ville Saint-Laurent. First, an aluminum pyramidal structure presents, on each of its faces, a metal plaque on which are engraved the words “culture,” “technologie,” “industrie,” “commerce,” and “prospérité.” A vault, containing 150 objects offered by residents, is inside the pyramid, evoking the success of Ville Saint-Laurent. Parvis et portail # 22 is situated in the centre of the square. It brings together two vertical elements made of polished aluminum, oriented in opposite directions, to point to the old and new sectors of Ville Saint-Laurent. Finally, a rusted ploughshare, its furrows lost in the pavement, evokes the city’s rural past.

With Parvis et portail # 22, the artist was inspired by Gothic style. He has used the arch to represent the passage of time in a series of artworks begun in 1987; in 1993, the artist said, about arches, “Calm, serene hieratic figures far from being repellent or macabre, a nobility emanates from them. They invoke a raising of the spirit and meditation through their verticality.” 1

1. Letocha, Louise, and Yves Trudeau, Yves Trudeau. Parvis et portails, catalogue for the exhibition presented at Galerie Madeleine Lacerte, 25 April to 15 May 1993 (Québec City: Éditions de la Canoterie), p. 3 (our translation).

To underline the change of millennium, in 1999 the Ville de Saint-Laurent launched a competition for integration of a work of public art into a public square. The winner of the competition, titled “Notre millénaire, le Meilleur est à venir” (Our millennium, the best is yet to come), was Yves Trudeau.