Preparing the foundation for the Meilleur-Atlantique tributary sewer on north shore of Montreal. (Photo source: City of Montreal Archives)

How else dispose of an immortal force
No longer needed? Staunch it at its source
With cinder loads dumped down? The brook was thrown
Deep in a sewer dungeon under stone
In fetid darkness still to live and run –
And all for nothing it had ever done
Except forget to go in fear perhaps.
No one would know except for ancient maps
That such a brook ran water. But I wonder
If from its being kept forever under,
The thoughts may not have risen that so keep
This new-built city from both work and sleep.

- excerpt from A Brook in the City by Robert Frost, 1923

I’ve already written a bit about how most of Riviere St. Pierre has been lost, but it’s definitely not the only river or creek to have suffered this fate. Perhaps “lost” isn’t the best word to use. While the majority have been removed from both the landscape and our collective memory,  their waters can still be found beneath us, flowing through the island’s sewer system.

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Looking out into the Cote St-Luc collector's "shangri-la" chamber.

Picking up from the last entry, getting beyond the relatively small (yet steep and intimidating) slide of Double Ducker ended up requiring the use of some rope. It’s common for cities to add features like ladders, handrails or even stairs to allow workers to get up and down sloped sections like this, but I’ve yet to see anything like that here in Montreal.

So this time with nel58 and controleman along for the ride, we hammered a
steel piton into the gap where two sections of concrete pipe met, attached a knotted rope and made our way down. Easy peasy, quick and easy.

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A typical interceptor manhole cover.

If there’s one thing that strikes fear into the hearts and minds of Montreal drainers (all three of us), it’s the island’s deep-level network of interceptor sewers. They are big concrete tunnels (up to 14.5 meters in diameter), often running at 100 feet below grade and with a ferocious amount of raw sewage coursing through them. All the wastewater of Montreal eventually drops down into one of these three tunnels. Our biggest fear is that we’d somehow end up going straight down there with it.

Because of this, we tend to keep our distance from anything marked “Intercepteur” and avoid passing through sections of sewers that come close to emptying into them.

Fortunately, there are  still ways to have a look at the network from a safe distance.

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The twin inlet channels leading to Double Ducker.

From a distance, the drain (which I’ve named Double Ducker) beginning at the edge of the Meadowbrook Country Club doesn’t really appear to be much. In fact, if it wasn’t for the old limestone construction of its inlet, then I wouldn’t have bothered looking at it more carefully in the first place. The two entry points are all of two feet high. Rarely does that sort of size suggest anything good lies beyond.

It wasn’t until I got closer that I realized that the two channels are actually double this height. Over the years, sediment and other debris has more or less created a dam of sorts, but beyond this it soon dips down and opens up to reveal the full height.

Four feet isn’t all that comfortable a height to walk through, but it’s better than two feet. So I slipped on my chest waders, squeezed through the left side and crouched through 75 feet or so of what appeared to be hastily cut limestone blocks.

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At the mouth of Riviere St. Pierre during the early stages of Montreal in 1700.

In a golf course to the west of downtown Montreal, you’ll find the last remaining portion of Rivière Saint-Pierre that still exists above ground. 200 meters are all that are left of a river system that once flowed freely over the landscape. The rest of it’s been retrofitted into the city’s sewer system or lost entirely. This one brief open stretch is found at the river’s upper reaches, in the town of Montreal Ouest. If one were to follow the river’s original path downstream from here, fifteen kilometers later you’d find yourself standing at the tip of Pointe à Callière. It was here, where the river spilled out into the open waters of the St. Lawrence that the city of Montreal first began.

“Here I examined the country very carefully, but after looking everywhere found no spot more suitable than a little place to which pinnaces and shallops can ascend. And near this Place Royale, there is a small river, which leads to some distance into the interior, alongside which are more than sixty arpents of land, which have been cleared and are now like meadow, where one might sow grain and do gardening. [...] So, having examined very carefully and found this spot to be one of the finest on this river, I ordered the trees of the Place Royale to be cut down and cleared off, in order to level the ground and make it ready for building.”

- Samuel de Champlain, 1611

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Former Riverside pumping station outlet.

So I’ve decided to start a site dedicated to the underground places found in and around Montreal. The bulk of the content will involve sewers and storm drains but will also dip into other aspects such as the city’s waterworks, utility tunnels, metro system and whatever else I happen to stumble across.

I’ve always wanted to start a site for this sort of thing, but never quite knew where to begin. Either that or I felt I was too green to the city to be qualified to write about it in the first place. But I’ve been living here for two years now and figure I’ve amassed enough knowledge (some might say useless knowledge) to be able to write with some degree of authority regarding the places I go.

I’ve been posting the odd photograph taken underground on www.worksongs.com for the past three years now. I’ve always enjoyed using the photoblog format, but it’s not always so good to use when you want to combine photography with more than a paragraph of writing. Hopefully this sort of thing will work out well.

I guess that’s it. If for some reason anything isn’t working or I don’t have my facts right about something, then just let me know.

Enjoy.