MONTREAL -- Seven arrests and hundreds of dollars in fines haven't stopped a 20-year-old man from working under the cloak of darkness to see his name bathed in the glow of the midday sun.

"I feel it inside, I just have to do it," says graffiti writer Monk.e, who started "tagging" his name six years ago in Drummondville, about 100 kilometres east of Montreal.

"Sometimes I don't have money to eat, but always I can paint."

The soft-spoken francophone's moniker is just one of thousands thrown up across Montreal on buildings, bridges, railway cars, mail boxes and subway stations.

As a teen, Monk.e -- who doesn't want to use his real name because of his illegal graffiti -- was drawn to the activity by the desire to express himself and fit in with a subculture that's gained a global following.

"We just want people to know that we exist," he said outside an east-end exhibition of canvas graffiti.

As a DJ spins the heavy beat of hip-hop music, the artists gather among the admiring glances of friends. The creations hang respectably in rows as in any art gallery on opening night.

Monk.e has mostly moved on from scrawling his name to legal graffiti sanctioned by the city.

A city-run program makes several walls available for mural paintings each summer.

Paint is supplied, but the artists aren't paid for their efforts unless the property owner has a certain request.

Twenty-five walls will be painted this year, along with eight walls that are open for graffiti at any time. More than 300 walls have been painted in Toronto over the last four years in a similar effort to reduce illegal graffiti.

"The city views (illegal) graffiti as disrespectful toward people" such as business owners, whose property is defaced, said Nicole Sophie Viau, who has been running the Montreal graffiti program for seven years.

The city spends $150,000 to help businesses ward off graffiti. It supplies vines for planting to shield exposed walls and works with youth organizations and schools to prevent teens from taking up the activity.

It also spends up to $2 million annually to clean municipal property of unwanted graffiti. The public transit system has its own program, spending $5 million to clean Metro stations of graffiti.

The prevalence of graffiti has increased across Canada over the last few years, having gained favour due to the popularity of hip-hop music.

While graffiti can be traced back to ancient civilizations, its American roots originated from a tradition of subway graffiti in the early 1970s in New York.

Unable to gain access to mainstream radio, hip-hop artists advertised themselves and their music through graffiti.

Now, graffiti is big business. It has been co-opted by advertisers. Web sites devoted to graffiti sell paraphernalia. Graffiti-cleaning companies have sprung up as municipalities, businesses and schools spend millions annually removing it.

Studies suggest graffiti costs Canadian taxpayers $1.4 billion annually, says Staff Sgt. Heinz Kuck, head of Toronto police's graffiti eradication program.

About 80 per cent of graffiti that's seen in Canada is generated by young hip-hop enthusiasts, says Kuck.

The average kid is a 16-year-old male, from any socio-economic background, who's searching for a sense of identity and self-fulfilment. While some steal paint and do soft drugs, they aren't hard-core vandals.

Of the remaining 20 per cent of graffiti, some is gang-related that marks turf and conveys threats of extortion and murder, says Kuck.

Other graffiti is hate-related, like the anti-Semitic material painted onto two Montreal Jewish schools last week.

In the last couple of years, Toronto has cleaned 15,750 square metres of graffiti-laden surfaces. That's equivalent to three football fields.

Yet police are barely holding their own in the war on such vandalism. The best that can be hoped for is to ensure graffiti remains at a level that's acceptable in an urban community, said Kuck.

"Graffiti has been in existence since the beginning of mankind," he said. "Graffiti is on the walls of Pompeii, it's in the Colosseum, it's mentioned in biblical text, it has been around since time immemorial and it's something that we have to deal with."

In Toronto, 204 people have been arrested for graffiti over the last two years.