Decarie Raimbault sewer excavation, 1958. (Photo source: City of Montreal Archives)

So  “construction season” started a few days ago here in Montreal, and with it came the City’s announcement that they’ll be spending a record $608 million this year on road and underground infrastructure projects. According to a CBC report, roughly half of that amount will be spent on sewers, but I’m guessing this will mostly involve replacing watermains.  Journalists have this habit of referring to any underground pipe as being a sewer regardless of its function.

Construction crews have been busy ripping up the asphalt of the streets for awhile now, replacing the century-old iron mains with what looks to be  PVC pipe. It’s for this reason that portions of Notre Dame and Maisonneuve are currently closed off to general traffic. I’m sure overhauling some of  the older brick sewers is next on the agenda. Any piece of infrastructure that’s approaching 150 years old is bound to make any civil works engineer nervous. While I insist the old brick sewers are still in reasonably good shape, maybe the people who get paid to inspect them for a living have a better idea as to what’s on the verge of collapsing and what isn’t. Or maybe it’s just a make-work thing. Who knows?

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Brick and ceramic tile block transition near the intersection of rue D'Argenson and Centre

Here’s a nice little find from the other night inside one of the older brick sewers running below Rue D’argenson in Point St. Charles. I had originally hoped to see something interesting where the sewer passes underneath the Lachine Canal and towards Rue St. Jacques. That ended up being a letdown with nothing but a dead-end chamber near the Canal’s edge not even worth photographing. Making our way in the opposite direction, we came across something uncommon for Montreal: a 150 meter section constructed using clay tile blocks.

It’s questionable as to why the transition occurs, but it’s possible that the brick sewer was initially laid during the late 1800s and the tile section  later during the early 1900s when the streets south of rue Centre began to fill in a bit more.  The sewer likely discharged into Riviere St-Pierre just ahead of the portion that had been converted into an open tailrace channel for the City’s Waterworks system. From that point everything would have been whisked away to Verdun and out to the St. Lawrence.

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There’s a terrific multi-page article about Montreal’s lost rivers in the Saturday edition of The Gazette. I’ve been working with journalist Marian Scott who did an excellent job researching the subject by bringing in a broad range of people including city historians, architects, engineers, geologists and environmentalists. It’s been a fun and interesting project and it was nice to see a few of my photos used. I really wasn’t expecting to see myself on the front page so that was a nice surprise.

Unfortunately what’s online isn’t quite as interesting without a lot of the visuals that are in the print version, but for anyone interested in having a read, you’ll find the different sections below.

Our island’s lost rivers – main article

‘Drainer’ explores the world of water under our feet – section about yours truly (a few of the numbers in there aren’t quite right, but otherwise all is good)

Water, water everywhere -  summary of some of the island’s lost watercourses

This CSI tracks a polluted creek – section involving Daniel Green of Le Société Pour Vaincre la Pollution (the Society to Conquer Pollution)

Inside the "7-UP" chamber.

The West Island of Montreal offers what are essentially the low-lying fruit for underground exploring. The primarily residential areas of Pointe-Claire, Dorval and Beaconsfield all make use of a separated sewer system with one set of pipes for sewage and another for stormwater. Storm drains discharge directly into the river (or Lac St-Louis) and if one knows where the larger outfalls are, one can simply put on a pair of rubber boots (or even flip-flops) and walk on in.

Most of the time this would be considered a good thing, but it seems as though the majority of storm drains in this part of the island were built during the 1970s or later using fairly simple prefab concrete components. Put another way: if you’ve been in more than a few, they’re kind of boring.

Still, they offer a respite from the stress that comes with exploring the combined sewers found elsewhere on the island. You don’t have to worry about manhole covers, e-coli poisoning, industrial contaminants, hydrogen sulfide, rats (if you’re afraid of them) or things getting swept away through three feet of fast-flowing grey water. Every so often it’s nice to not have deal with such challenges.

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This has nothing to do with the underground, but a series of my photos can be found in the latest issue of Geist magazine. They can also be found here on their website, but like most photographs, they always look a little better in print.  As usual, the rest of the issue is pretty good too so go have a look!

So the weather’s been pretty lousy lately here. There’s been too much rain (or the threat of rain) for it to be safe enough to venture underground. So instead  I’ve been learning how to use the Google Maps API in order to create  something a bit more comprehensive for the sewers in Montreal. I’ve been making use of Google Maps so far, but have only been drawing out individual portions. Hopefully this is a bit better.

This is still very much a work in progress, but I figured it’s good enough to launch now. I’ll be using it to reference certain things in future entries.

You can find it through the top menu or right here: www.undermontreal.com/maps

The paths for the former creeks were taken from an impressive plan published in 1958 by the city of Montreal’s Water and Sanitation department.  It’s probably in need of some simplification and even a few revisions as it seems to contradict a lot of older maps, especially for the northern portion of the island.

The collector sewer paths are based on a few city planning maps combined with a fair amount of estimation on my part. Eventually I’ll be adding more paths and probably be making a number of revisions,  but in the meantime, this will have to do.