Few landmarks define a city's skyline quite like a blinking red sign visible from across the St. Lawrence. Erected in 1948 atop Ogilvie Flour Mills' New Royal Mill in Pointe-Saint-Charles, the Farine Five Roses sign stands fifteen feet per letter across two rows of neon, cycling through a slow on-off rotation that has become as much a part of arriving in Montreal as the bridge itself. Its text has shifted with the city's history: originally reading "Farine Ogilvie Flour," it became "Farine Five Roses Flour" after Ogilvie acquired the Lake of the Woods Milling Company in 1954, then lost its final word to Bill 101 in 1977. The sign survived a near-demolition in 2006 when ADM sold the Five Roses brand to Smucker's, public outcry compelling both companies to fund a renovation approaching one million dollars. Designated a protected architectural feature by the borough of Ville-Marie in 2020, it now reads as both advertisement and palimpsest, a record of the industrial corridor that once ran the length of the Lachine Canal.