If you visit Montreal, you’ll see her—the winged woman who guards the city. High up on a monument on the slopes of the city’s centrepiece, Mont Royal, you’ll catch our civic protectress in the act of stepping into the air. Nicknamed the Goddess of Liberty (officially: La Renommée, or The Fame), the Athenian beauty extends her hand to the people. Below her stands the figure after which the monument is named: a copper statue of a middle-aged man in a dapper nineteenth-century suit, his hand also extended in greeting or blessing. This is Sir George-Étienne Cartier, one of the Fathers of Confederation. The monument was designed by the sculptor George William Hill and inaugurated on September 6, 1919. On the south side of the monument, a bronze woman sits in between a young boy who is holding a globe and a young girl who is reading ...