Montreal Night

Byron T. Randall

An early work by Byron Randall, done when he was living in Canada with his wife, sculptor Helen Nelson, and their children, having fled the fallout of McCarthyism as it swept the U.S. Both Randall and Nelson had been involved in anti-war activism during the Second World War, and had first gone to Mexico before settling in Montreal, where they remained until Helen's accidental death in 1956.

In this scene, people ice skate in Jean-Mance Park, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. A horse-drawn milk cart ambles along in the miground, with apartments in the background and bare trees throughout. A joyous scene tempered only by the moody winter sky.