I need to get back into the habit of writing and posting here again.  I think a combination of things diminished my motivation a little bit over the past month or so, but I can feel that changing. I just need to iron out a few more creative kinks and I’ll be back at it again.

In the meantime, another photo taken inside one of the driest stretches of sewer in Montreal. This stretch acts as an overflow between the Decarie-Raimbault and Meilleur-Atlantique collectors, though I think I’d need one of the city’s engineers to explain to me how and when sewage actually gets through its three floodgates.

What is clear is that the air inside this stretch isn’t so good. It’s only about 15 feet underground, but I guess that without a steady flow of water, good airflow can be a problem. It seemed alright during the first trip, but after we returned a few days later it was noticeably worse. My guess is that we had unleashed a good deal of noxious gasses during the first trip by walking through some particularly mucky sections.  Both manhole covers leading into this little conduit have large slots through them and are designed to allow as much air to escape as possible. A Google Street view reveals that they have ‘ventilation’ stamped into them.

For whatever reason, this one’s also full of old credit and bank cards. No gold coins or wallets or anything fancy like that. Just crummy plastic cards that are well past their expiration date.

Snow dump hatches inside the Decarie Raimbault collector sewer.

For the past couple of years now, I’ve been looking for ways to get inside the sewers found within a northern portion of the island of Montreal. Actually, that statement is a bit misleading since it hasn’t exactly been a high priority.

Covering the areas of Ville St. Laurent, Ahunstic-Cartierville and the Town of Mont Royal, my view towards these sewers was somewhat indifferent. I knew that they were often large (up to 15 feet in diameter), but because they consisted of long stretches and were built a relatively short time ago, I had assumed that they would be quite boring and repetitive. Maybe even duller than the industrial parks and suburbs that they pass beneath.

Drainage basins for the island of Montreal as defined by the City's planning department in 1955. The region in red is the focus of this entry.

These were always the ones I’d get to once I finished exploring more interesting things, but nevertheless I would occasionally find myself looking for ways to access some portion of it. I never had much luck until just recently.

Part of the problem in accessing sewers in Montreal, at least for laymen such as myself, is that 99% of the manholes are situated in the middle of the street. This wouldn’t be an issue if the lids covering them didn’t weigh up to 300 lbs— definitely not the sort of weight you can easily throw around.

Eventually I did manage to find one feasible entry point in a most ideal location— a quiet spot, free from both car and pedestrian traffic. Better yet, this entry point was at the center of the system so trips could be divided up nicely without having to make extensive round-trips.

Despite my low expectations of what these sewers might have to offer, I was quite pleased with my find. Just over a week has passed since the  first visit inside of it, and we’ve only covered a relatively small portion, but so far those expectations have been exceeded.

But before we delve into the system, it’s worth having a peak at what was in this region both before during the time of its construction.

New Frontiers

Island of Montreal circa 1901.

If we go back to the late 1900s, much of this area was uninhabited save for the few hundred people living in the then small communities of Ville St. Laurent and Cote des Neiges. The surrounding land was primarily agricultural. A small network of roads linked the community of Cote Des Neiges at the foot of the Mont Royal to the North shore of the island.

1913 map showing the underground railway connection between the Town of Mont Royal and Montreal.

A decade later, with the advent of the automobile and tramway came population growth in the area. No longer would the growth of Montreal need to be exclusive to the areas immediately surrounding  the city of Montreal. In 1911, the Canadian Pacific Railway purchased 2,307 hectares of rural land northwest of Cote des Neiges before building a tunnel straight underneath the mountain towards the heart of Montreal.

The acquired land would eventually be turned into the island’s first suburb. Incorporating a European-style radial street plan, this “Model City” would mark the arrival of planned growth for the island. From now on, the city would develop, not solely on necessity, but the anticipation of what the future might entail.

Baby Steps Towards a Sewer System

Detail of 1922 map illustrating the north island's collector sewer and its two tributaries.

Of course, with this new development came the need for sewers. In 1912 two seven foot concrete collector sewers were constructed. One served the northern edge of Notre Dame de Grace and the second for the Town of Mount Royal. The two sewers merged just northeast of where the Decarie interchange is today, then generally followed the path of what was then known as Farmer’s Road before emptying into Riviere Des Prairies roughly five kilometers away.

I recently discovered a way into the portion running north of  the interchange.

The Notre Dame de Grace Collector, constructed in 1912.

At only 7 feet tall, the paris-style sewer “sidewalks” weren’t exactly convenient to walk on, but they did offer a respite from the often mucky conditions found in the centre trench. The half dozen rats scurrying along with me seemed to agree.

1911 plan for the Notre Dame de Grace collector. Source: Province of Quebec Archives, Montreal Region.

Missing in the section I walked through was the 16” pipe which appears on plans for the sewer. Although it’s unlabeled, it’s presumably a water main. This practice of running multiple utilities through the sewer system, while common in cities such as London and Paris never quite caught on in Montreal.

One of several low-tech flow regulators that stand in the way.

But in typical Montreal sewer fashion, nothing is ever as easy to get through as it first appears. A series of flow control gates cut across the sewer every 100 meters or so. In most cases, I could craw I’d you have to climb over the top. Not wanting to have to put up with this, and knowing that Riviere Des Prairies was a good four kilometers further, I didn’t venture too far downstream.

The junction where the two sewers combined. To the right: Notre Dame de Grace. To the left: Cote des Neiges.

At the upstream end, the junction for the NDG and Cote de Neiges sewers can be found, but unfortunately both have been sealed off making further passage impossible.

Growth and the Need for Planning

If the development of Mount Royal marked the beginning of rational planning, it’s clear that its sewage system was still mired in the 19th century way of thinking. At only seven feet tall over a total length of kilometers, there was no way this sewer could ever facilitate the rapid growth that would come decades later. As Ville St. Laurent and the surrounding communities continued to grow steadily, sewage overflows during heavy rainstorms became more common.

Wartime housing in 1944 in the Ville St-Laurent neighbourhood of Bois-Franc for employees of Noorduyn Aviation Ltd. Source: Pistard Archives.

By the time WW2 rolled around, large-scale industrial complexes such as Vickers and Continental Can were beginning to take up large tracts of land. War-time housing units, erected quickly for local employees took up additional real estate. Given the circumstances, new sewer construction wasn’t exactly a high priority. If the system was to be replaced, it would have to wait.

Naturally, things grew even faster in the years following the war. In the late 1940s, the Norgate Shopping Centre (Canada’s first mall) was constructed at Decarie and Cote Vertu. A network of relatively low-density residential areas was begin to spread. With talk of new highways and arteries being built in the near future, it only made sense that the 40+ year old sewer system in the area would require a major overhaul.

Big Thinking, Big Sewers

Open-cut construction of the Meilleur-Atlantique Collector sewer in Cartierville, 1953. Source: City Archives of Montreal.

The new collector sewers were designed far larger than necessary for the time, not to accommodate household and industrial waste, but to handle the storm run-off of the newly paved landscape. As Montreal’s Director of Public Works Department, Lucien L’Allier explained in 1957,  their size was determined based on the region’s “imperviousness” more than actual population. Densely developed residential areas were given the same treatment as those designated for industrial use. “Medium class” residential areas, more likely to contain water absorbing lawns, were put in the same category as railway yards.

1956 diversion ditch for the waters of Ruisseau Raimbault. Its flow is now contained within the Decarie Raimbault sewer. Source: City Archives of Montreal

Determining the size and path of this system was no doubt a tricky task as it involved a fair amount of speculation in how the area would evolve. Given that it was the late 1950s, there was a high level of optimism regarding how much the island would and could be developed. To put this into some perspective, by 1961 there was an expectation that the population for the island of Montreal and outlying areas would reach 7 million by 2000 with much of this growth occurring outside the city of Montreal. While there would be explosive growth over the next two decades, their estimations were a bit off the mark. Today’s population for this same area sits at roughly 3.6 million.

For all the flaws of today’s sprawling metropolis, Montreal’s city planners must be credited for at least attempting to think ahead to the future. As mayor Jean Drapeau stated in 1955, efforts were being made to “not only solve today’s problems, but avoid creating others, and try to anticipate problems 10, 20, even 30 years in advance.”

While Drapeau was clearly referring to the city’s planned autoroutes, the same approach was used when planning the island’s new sewer systems starting to be built around this same time. The crown jewel of these new systems was the Decarie Raimbault.

Enter the Decarie Raimbault System

Sewers constructed for the Decarie Raimbault system between 1956-58. Image source: City Archives of Montreal

The Decarie Raimbault system takes its name from Decarie Blvd and Ruisseau Raimbault, the creek which was diverted underground during the development of the system. At over x miles long, it took three years to complete at a total cost of x number of dollars.

Heading around the bend towards Cremazie blvd.

Possibly the same location taken in 1958 during a final inspection of the sewer.

The first time nel58 and I entered this sewer, we were happy to find that it was easy enough to walk through. With the exception of a few slippery spots, it could be navigated quickly enough by keeping to the edges. This stretch was tunneled through limestone and despite its size could be built using any steel reinforcement. With the exception of one section where a portion of the ceiling has collapsed, it seems to be holding up quite well.

The first noteworthy feature we came across was a rather massive snow dump chamber shown at the beginning of this post. It’s a feature which seems to have been added late— during the 1990s, by the looks of the materials involved. Google Street View now provides us a convenient way of being able to see the facility that contains to the large hatches.

Sewer stretch marks at our midway point.

Carrying on up through the main section of the sewer provided few rewards. It is a 2.5km slog through the same style of pipe, running westward parallel to the metropolitain highway. These sections aren’t particularly deep below the surface, but it was chosen to use tunnel boring machines rather than more commonly used open-cut techniques.

Tunnelling of the southern portion of the Decarie Raimbault system in 1958. Image source: City Archives of Montreal

Although not stated explicitly, the disruptions of open-cut construction would have no doubt caused mayhem in an area already well known  for traffic congestion. Before being replaced with the spaghetti junction that exists today, the old Decarie circle was described in 1957 as “chaotic, chronic and intolerable.” Local businesses were up in arms. I don’t imagine that digging open trenches along the neighbouring streets would have helped things any, especially not during a municipal election year.

Junction discovered after travelling roughly 3kms upstream. The passage where I'm standing heads south towards the Decarie expressway.

Eventually a junction appears, with one pipe heading south  and a smaller one continuing further west. We opted for the smaller one with less water coming down through it. Given that it was already late, we didn’t travel much further before deciding to call it a night. Only after I looked the sewer maps upon returning home did I discover we had made it to the middle of the Decarie interchange. Not bad for one night. After all, how many people can say they’ve walked below one of the city’s more infamous traffic arteries? I know, not the most exciting thing in the world, but given the area, you have to take what you can get.

1959 Gazette article announcing the new Decarie interchange. Source: City Archives of Montreal.

Being that this system was only recently discovered, there is still an incredible amount of it left to explore. There are sewers that snake their way up towards the mountain. There’s a connection over to the Meilleur Atlantique collector which most living in Montreal are familiar with because of its tendency to overflow out onto the ‘Acadie interchange. Basically, there’s enough here to keep me busy for awhile so stay tuned.

Related Entries: Montreal’s Underground Underdogs

I have a feeling we're not in Montreal anymore.

I’ve been asked a number of times if I’ve ever come across anything underground in Montreal that’s surprised me.  I never really quite know what to say since most of what I see is fairly predictable. It’s mostly pipes and chambers of varying sizes, constructed out of either concrete, brick or occasionally metal. I haven’t (yet) come across any dead bodies, pirate ships or gold coins — although I did find an old wallet once. What surprises do exist usually aren’t worth mentioning; a section that abruptly ends or a stretch that gets larger in diameter when you were expecting it to get smaller. Not exactly the sort of stuff that inspires answers people are hoping to hear.

Occasionally, though, I do come across things that I’d consider to be quite out of the ordinary and this entry involves one such example.

Enter the Cote St Paul Collector Sewer

The Cote St. Paul collector (CSPC) delivers wastewater from the southern half of Cote St. Paul towards the eastern edge of Point St Charles where it falls into a far larger sewer, the Saint Pierre Collector.

The main arm of the CSPC  begins as a 6’ brick pipe built during the late 1800s and finishes with 12’ prefabricated concrete pipe that was set during the 1990s. Running parallel for much of its length is the former water conduit turned sewer that I covered in this entry. A short connection exits between the two via a 5’ pipe, thus allowing any excess flow to be conveyed from one sewer to the other. I’m assuming the CSPC was added (or more likely reconstructed) to accommodate the burgeoning neighbourhoods that came after the second world war.

The original brick portion of the sewer is fairly straightforward. There’s a nice example of a shaft where snow would have been dumped down into the sewers from street level.  Rusty “shock bars” and a variety of stones lining the sides and bottom helped prevent ice and other falling debris from fracturing the surrounding brickwork.

A 19th century snow-dump shaft at the beginning stages of the Cote St. Paul collector.

Eventually the brick comes to an end and the sanitary flow falls down into a nice little concrete chamber.

The beginning of the newer concrete section of the sewer that runs underneath Blvd. de la Verendreye

Canoes in the Sewers?

For the next few kilometers, it’s a typical mid 20th century sewer- cast-in-place concrete and horseshoe shaped. It runs below underneath Blvd Lavendreye for approximately three kilometers, a stretch that contains few noteworthy characteristics. The exceptions are two shafts which former city planners have marked on maps as “pits pour canot” – literal translation:  “well for a canoe.”

City sewer map showing locations of snow dumps and "pits for canoes." Also shown is the old aqueduc water supply conduit running just a bit south of the CSPC.

At the top of each of these shafts are two sets of racks which appear as though they were designed to swing up and down. It definitely isn’t a canoe (or boat) friendly contraption so it’s unclear where the name comes from. I’ve never come across this sort of thing anywhere else, either on maps or through firsthand experience walking through the city’s sewers.

The mystery contraption at the top of the "canoe" pit. Obviously it hasn't been used in quite some time.

Another Sewer, Another Planet

A giant flowstone that seems to have become dislodged from another point in the sewer.

It’s at the downstream end of the CSLC where things start to get fun. Here, a six-foot high brick relief sewer veers off to the North. I was hoping to be able to follow this to get inside a portion of Riviere St. Pierre that was covered over. Instead, I found something far better.

I’ve encountered calcite deposits inside sewers in the past. Stalactites, stalagmites, “soda straws” and flowstones are all to be found in just about any sewer or storm drain that is more than a decade or so old. Caused partially by the limestone in cement, these formations can help turn a run-of-the-mill system into something quite wonderful. This one is no exception. In fact, I’ve never seen anything else like it.

What happens when you don't clean your sewers.

For roughly 100 meters, the walls of this century-old sewer make for a breathtaking spectacle. Nature has completely taken over to the point where you’re easily tricked into believing you’re not inside a man-made structure anymore. Instead, you are in a cave deep beneath the surface of the earth in some exotic country. Wherever you are, you are most definitely not 15 feet below a light industrial district and a fifteen-minute drive from your home.

An assortment of objects caught during higher water levels, lies snagged or in encased in the columns of calcite. It feels a bit like walking through a jungle, only the vegetation has been replaced with dangling plastic bags, condoms and panty-liners. As unsanitary as that might sound, the surrounding beauty supersedes the grossness of these individual objects.

Adding a bit of comedic relief to this relief sewers is an old (knock-off?) Spiderman action figure, which will most likely remain entombed in this blessed mess for the remainder of its days. Its pose only adds to its appearance of helplessness.

Sewer: 1, Spider-Man: 0.

Around the Bend and Back Again

The spic and span brickwork around the the bend in the sewer.

Carrying onward, the sewer takes a 90 degree turn at which point things start to settle down a bit. Around the bend, the sewer is (almost) as clean as a whistle. Not only are the walls free of the formations and debris a few feet earlier, but water coming into it via a small connection runs clear and seems to be free of any sanitary flow. However, that doesn’t last for very long.

A torrent of sewage falling down from the main branch of the CSPC.

A loud rumble can be heard off in the distance, the result of a 12-foot drop-shaft chamber. Here the old brick sewer continues on, but is intercepted by the main arm of the Cote St Paul collector. A violent torrent of water from the latter falls down from an adjacent side of the chamber resulting in one big hot and foggy mess. Without any means of reaching the bottom of the chamber or the opposite side, there’s no choice but to head back in the opposite direction.

Vibrapipe

The gateway into the section constructed during the 1990s.

Once back out of the brick sidepipe, you can continue further downstream through the main arm of the CSLC. A bit further and the older concrete construction comes to an end and one is greeted with a taste of the 1990s. A robust hexagonal  arch creates the entrance way into a robust chamber. A foot-wide groove designed to hold stop-logs runs down the walls and across the floor.

A short distance beyond this point is where you’ll find the beginning of a modern 12’ concrete pipe manufactured by Vibrapipe. Its name and casting date are stamped onto each section. Compared to the older sewers covered so far, this one shows few signs of wear and tear. While I wouldn’t look forward to having to walk through kilometers worth of this stuff, it can make for somewhat interesting space-age style photos.  Fortunately there isn’t too much of this found on the island of Montreal, at least not for the larger diameter sewers. While common in other cities like Toronto, here in Montreal it’s still somewhat of an anomaly.

Prefabricated concrete pipe compliments of the Quebec company named Vibrapipe

This section of the sewer takes roughly the same path as the smaller brick. Following this leads to another dropshaft chamber which incidentally is a short distance away from the other one. Right before the edge there are ten poles (aka “tell-tales”) suspended from anchors in the ceiling.

Suspended tell-tales inside the last walkable portion of the CSPC.

You’ll see these in Montreal sewers before any significant drop. The poles  swing back and forth easily and are there to remind workers that they are near the edge of something that they could fall down into. In this case one 10 foot deep pit, with the other one  just  a bit further downstream is probably as good a place as any to put them.

It’s also a good place to turn around and head back home.

The lovely three meter wide brick pipe of Toronto's "Humble Howard."

A couple of weeks ago I made a trip back to my old underground stomping (sloshing?) grounds of Toronto to go and have a look at a recent discovery made by a group of local explorers. “Humble Howard”, named after Toronto’s first land surveyor John Howard, consists of a 3 meter-high circular brick sewer that starts at the northeastern edge of High Park and eventually makes it way down towards Lake Ontario. Today it serves primarily as an overflow conduit for the smaller sewers if ever ever the city’s interceptors become overburdened.

The evening I visited the system with Kowalski, nel58 and Controleman led to the discovery of a beautiful  (but extremely foggy) connecting sewer built of brick and concrete. Its shape and overall atmosphere  gave it a certain warmth and coziness. I would have gladly followed it to its conclusion had it not been so late in the evening at that point.

Inside the combined sewer that was given the nickname "High There."

While I can’t say I’ve missed Toronto that much since moving to Montreal three years ago, I am envious of its range of possibilities when it comes to exploring the underground. Even after a decade of people actively exploring it and looking for new things to get into, there’s still a feeling that there’s still a lot of infrastructure down there that remains untapped.

Brick meets concrete somewhere at the south end of Toronto's "Humble Howard"

That’s not to say that Toronto has better or more interesting stuff (most of the time, anyway) , but because it’s so spread out and is, in many ways, a bit more cosmopolitan, there’s always a sense that one could never run out of new things to find and to try and get into. Just when you think everything in that city has already been cracked, something new and exciting inevitably comes along.

Montreal, on the other hand, tends to feel a bit more finite in its opportunities. While we have an extensive sewer system, much of which can be walked through, it tends to lack in other areas such as steam and service tunnels or infrastructure related to its waterworks. I get the feeling that in a couple of years, I’ll be starting to run out of things to put down on my to-do list. I have no reason to complain right now, not while I still have a pile of things to get to and to try and document well,  but I can feel it coming.

What appears to be an overflow pit for a low-level sewer found on the right side of Rochester's Densmore Creek drain.

Rochester is another city that seems ripe for great discoveries, mostly because it’s an old city, but also because so little of it seems to have been examined in detail thus far. It also features the impressive Deep-Rock Tunnel System, a sewer overflow system that puts Montreal’s interceptor network to shame.

After reading about the exploits of two underground enthusiasts living there, we decided to take the long way back to Montreal and meet up with the two of them. “Trent” and “Whittaker Owens” guided us through a rather interesting storm drainage system that involves a mammoth overflow chamber, colloquially referred to as the “Titanic Room” due to the bow-like structure planted in the middle of the room.

Inside Rochester's "Titanic Room" aka the overflow chamber of the Densmore Diversion Facility.

The rest of the drain is arch-shaped, similar in style, but far larger than Toronto’s “High There” and the Point St. Charles Collector of Montreal.

Inside the big arch that makes up the better part of this Rochester drain.

Also of interest along the way were two flooded stone pits located off to the side with the smell of combined sewerflow wafting up from below. I’m not familiar enough with the city’s system to be able to make sense of how all of this fits together. I’ll leave any explanations to its local explorers who know far more about these things than I do.

Additional  underground reading & viewing:

Toronto
Vanishing Point
Angels of the Underground
Jon Muldoon’s image collection

Rochester

Trent’s Flickr collections

A shaft underneath Bridge Street once used for dumping snow into the sewers.

Perhaps the most interesting underground features in the Montreal area are found within the old sewers built during the mid to late 1800s. Usually constructed entirely of brick and of sizes up to 9’ in diameter, they often appear to be steeped in history in a way that newer concrete sewers just can’t compare to. They have a warmer and organic quality to them as well that I tend to appreciate. Where concrete sewer systems can feel like cold modernist pieces of architecture, the brick ones seem more like inviting Victorian homes.

A good example of these characteristics can be found within the Point St. Charles Collector. As its name implies, this sewer was responsible for the drainage of the eastern half of Point St. Charles. (The western half was serviced by another sewer that I first started to explore in this entry). The sewer was also responsible for a portion of the neighbourhood once known as Victoriatown. Given that so little from this area can still be found at street level, it’s of some comfort that at least its sewer system can still be found and explored today.

Getting Started

Late 1880s representation of Montreal superimposed with the paths of the Point St. Charles Collector. The oldest portion of the sewer is shown here in red.

The oldest section of this particular system was constructed between 1862 and 1864, a time when the city was starting to implement its first master drainage plan. While some stretches of the creeks running along Craig Street (now St. Antoine) and William had already been covered over, the Point St Charles collector represented the beginning of a new era of widespread and methodical wastewater management. Five additional collector sewers would be built during this same time, only a few years after London and Paris finished developing their now legendary underground systems.

In its initial stages, the outlet of the Point Saint Charles collector was situated at the edge of a drainage channel for the Lachine Canal. This channel has mostly been covered over, but a portion of it can still be seen today underneath the Bonaventure highway opposite Farine Five Roses. In this same area, the Riverside Pumping Station was added in 1887 to help alleviate the system during spring floods. Shortly thereafter, a secondary sewer line was also added. A larger and deeper concrete tunnel would come decades later, and then another one still came during the 1990s with the introduction of the island’s interceptor network.

Today, the area is a confusing mash-up of old meets new technology which is hard to make sense of even when you’re inside.

The underground spaghetti junction found at the intersection of Bridge and Riverside.

Inside The System

Standing inside the lovely 147 year old egg-shaped section.

Using this area as a starting point, one can make their way a short distance into the oldest 4×6′ section of the sewer. I say a short distance, because, for whatever reason, the section approaching Bridge St. is filled to the top with rubble.

As far as you can get through the oldest section of the sewer.

Digging Through History

I imagine there must have been a fair amount of trial and error when it implementing drainage systems in the 1800s. In this case it’s unclear if the tunnel simply collapsed or of it was deliberately taken out of commission and filled with whatever was convenient at the time.

The last 50 meters or so of this section are half full of debris which makes it a bit uncomfortable to get through. It’s strictly crawling-height at this point, with the only payoff coming from being able to play guerrilla archaeologist while sifting through the rubble. Here you’ll find fragments of old glass, pottery and other unidentifiable materials. I’ve yet to find anything valuable inside a sewer in Montreal, but the bits and pieces of objects encountered in some areas are often interesting enough to make a bit of digging worthwhile. Just mind the worms. And the mosquitoes, too.

Various artifacts recovered from within the sewer rubble.

A few minutes of picking through the debris revealed the crown of a dark hand-blown bottle that closely resembles the one shown here for Hostetter’s Stomach Bitters. Regardless of what company the bottle came from, it likely dates from at least the 1870s.

The Second Line

Inside the placid stretch of the collector that was later built during the 1880s.

Perhaps as a result of problems encountered with this older sewer, a second relief line was later built that runs parallel to the original one for most of its course. Its exact construction date is unknown, but it’s safe to say it was probably built during the late 1880s around the same time the Riverside Pumping Station was completed.

A bit of a tight squeeze through a 2×3 foot side-pipe will allow you to enter this section. It has a wonderful arched shape which is common in other cities, but is something that I haven’t encountered before in Montreal. From here it’s easy to get through thanks to a hard layer of sediment lining the bottom that you can easily walk on top of. This 1km long stretch  is almost 7’ in height, but the grit and gravel removes at least a foot from this.

Unlike other sewers built around this time, there were no streams passing through this territory whose waters could be redirected to help keep the system free from silt and other debris. I don’t imagine the smaller sewer connections entering from the nearby stockyards and the Grand Trunk Railway shops could have helped much either.

Things are fine up until you reach the intersection of Bridge and Wellington where the sewer makes an abrupt turn to the west. Here the solid base of debris becomes a sloppy mess that’s less forgiving when it comes to supporting your weight and it’s at this point where things start to get fairly uninviting. The 130 year old brickwork changes to a shorter and much newer pre-fabricated concrete pipe that’s half-full of water. At this point there isn’t much incentive to push forward so your best bet is to turn around, go down Bridge Street and head back out.

What are most likely the roots of a poplar tree that have found their way into the moisture of the sewers.

One interesting feature of this stretch is the vegetation that’s managed to finagle its way in through to the sewer in search of water. The roots of some trees have taken the easy route in through smaller connecting pipes, but in other cases, some roots have actually pushed their way right through the mortar of the brickwork itself—no small feat considering most of these older sewers were lined using 2-3 rows of bricks.

Smaller roots that were determined to find their way to water through the brickwork.

The line of poplar trees and sumac situated in an area that the sewer passes through are the likely infiltrators. Half these trees look healthy, while the other half look as though they’re about to die so it’s hard to say just what effect the sewage is having on them. I’ll let the botanists and environmentalist out there figure this one out.

The line of trees South of Mill Street that are presumably drawing water from the sewers.

With no rain in the immediate forecast,  nel58 and I decided to re-visit a sewer that we had first entered two summers ago. We had to leave at the time because the air quality didn’t seem all that great.  I had sort of forgotten about it after getting distracted by a handful of other things around the city. Last night it was considerably fresher. Well, as fresh as a sewer can get, I suppose.  It didn’t smell like rotten eggs this time so that was good enough for us.

This was taken towards the end of the Point St-Charles Collector, near the intersection of Mill and Riverside in the area once known as Goose Village. It’s an old one; built between 1864 and 1866 when the city was beginning to develop a systematic drainage plan. Of course  it’s had its share alterations over the years, such as the side-pipe in the above photo which had to be patched up with concrete. Other sections have been walled off or filled in with rubble containing a fair amount of old glass and pieces of pottery.

More photos, maps, and historical stuff to follow soon. In the meantime, click the photo above for the larger version and (hopefully) enjoy.

Here’s a bit of video footage from about a month ago near the LaSalle entrance to the aqueduct. I’ve been poking around this general area for about a year now, hoping to find something interesting related to either the former or existing water supply intake pipes. I haven’t had much luck with that yet, but while walking through the woods at the edge of the aqueduct, I stumbled across a manhole cover which led to a fairly large, but half-flooded chamber.

After climbing down a very rusty ladder to a narrow ledge, I lit the chamber up with a spotlight to get a better look. A second ladder, with even rustier rungs, was almost entirely submerged from the flooding. I couldn’t see the bottom. I saw an entry point for water along the  side of the chamber facing the aqueduct. On the opposite side of the chamber, two additional channels with ceilings sloping down towards the height of the water could be seen. It was difficult to tell if they were entirely submerged, though. I thought that maybe if the water level there was low enough it might be able to get a better look down through the length of them.

Overlooking a portion of the chamber from the ledge.

Not content with being unable to see everything from the vantage point of the ledge, I returned a few days later with my good friend nel58 and (what else?) a $10 inflatable boat from Canadian Tire. Actually, a pool-toy would be a more apt term for it. Either way,  it did the job— at least up until nel58 took it for a spin. Ten minutes later it sprung a leak. Whoops.

The water level ended up coming up to the very top of the two channels I was interested in so that ended up being a bust, too. I figure they both lead into the conduit that I covered in my previous entry. If that’s the case, then there’s a good chance that most of that portion is considerably flooded as well.

A view from the "boat." The two channels that presumably lead into the water distribution conduit can be seen beneath the far wall.

So, all we could really do was go for a little cruise around the chamber using our “disposa-boat.” I can think of worse ways to spend an evening. The acoustics were fantastic and I imagine that during warmer months it would make for a nice little subterranean swimming hole. The water seemed clean enough for it. A variety of graffiti adorning the walls indicates that local kids have used the chamber for various activities in the past, but who knows if swimming was ever one of them.

What was the chamber used for originally? My theory is that it was added after the 1913 collapse of the water conduit. Up until that point, there was only one way water could enter the tunnel- through a small intake situated close to the shoreline of LaSalle. When a new intake system was developed to bring a cleaner source of water into the aqueduct itself, it probably made sense to have that same water be conveyed towards this chamber and  into the conduit. If ever it needed to be drained for inspection or repairs, then stop-logs could be added to serve as a temporary dam.

View of one of the two walled-off inlets found near the midway point of the aqueduct's water conduit.

Similarly, near the midway point of the conduit explored in the last entry, there is another chamber that looks as though it was added around the same time and for similar reasons. There may be others that I just haven’t come across yet. It has two inlets/outlets facing the side of the aqueduct, both of which have been permanently sealed off. There may have been simple control gates here at one point. Another slot for stop-logs runs across the middle of the conduit, dividing the two channels so that if one length of the tunnel ever needed to be taken out of service, the remaining portion could still be used.

Video footage courtesy of nel58.

In my last entry I talked about Montreal’s Aqueduct canal and its role in bringing water to the city of Montreal. In this entry, we’ll begin to go underground, but first, a bit more history…

I mentioned the use of hydraulic machinery and how it was powered by water by the aqueduct. Only a small portion of that water (less than 5%) was actually sent through the pipes and into homes and businesses. By the late 1800s, several problems with this system started to make it less than ideal. The first issue was that demand for water was increasing and more horsepower was required to distribute it. The aqueduct at the turn of the century, roughly a quarter the width it is today, was incapable of providing the hydraulic horsepower necessary to power the pumps.

On top of this, the success of system was often at the whims of mother nature. Low water levels in the summer and ice blockages in the winter frequently reduced pumping capacity. As a result, steam power, which was both cost and labour intensive, would then have to be used as a back-up.

Another problem was that the water was being brought in directly close the shoreline of the St. Lawrence River, which by this time was starting to become less than pure. City officials maintained that the water posed no health risks. However, there was a concern that drainage from properties situated upstream of the entrance to the aqueduct had the potential to cause future problems. Given that there was still no filtration process yet in place (and wouldn’t be until the early 1920s), engineers were starting to become somewhat mindful of what could possibly be entering the city’s water supply.

20th Century Solutions

To address the shortage of available horsepower, in 1907, after two decades worth of proposals and deliberations, it was decided to widen the aqueduct from 40 to 140 feet. Along with upgrades to pumping equipment, the alteration would provide a total of 2,500 HP during the winter months. A rate of 5,000 HP during the summer was achievable when the aqueduct was free of ice, or ‘frazil‘.

To help improve quality of water, a 9’ concrete conduit running underneath the aqueduct’s north shore was built between 1907 and 1909. In addition, the intake for this conduit would extend towards the middle of the St. Lawrence, where the water was less likely to contain sediment. By enclosing the water inside this underground pipe, the risk of further cross-contamination would also be diminished. The conduit would also serve as a continuous water supply while the aqueduct was emptied during its widening.

Rumour Has It.

I first learned of the conduit a couple of years ago, not through the city archives or maps, but from a message board dedicated to Verdun . In a bit of oral history, an older member recollected a time during his youth when he and his friends would open a manhole cover near the north side of the Crawford Street Bridge and climb down into a ‘9 foot pipe.’ This was enough to pique my interest. I decided to go have a look for myself.

When I arrived, the only manhole I could find in the area was now in the middle of Blvd De La Verendrye- a rather busy thoroughfare. If it was the same one he entered, then it must have been before the 1960s which was when they built the road . I walked further along the street hoping to find other options, but every single one was situated in the road. Feeling a bit dejected, I filed it under ‘things to look for if ever bored’ and left it at that.

A few months passed before I came across another reference to the conduit, this time in a city planning document from the 1930s. I learned that the pipe was connected to the waterworks system. A few weeks later, when Controleman came back from the City Planning department with a handful of sewer maps, one of which made clear where the conduit ran, that it was no longer in use, and more importantly, where the best point of entry was located.

City planning map detail showing aqueduc and the old water conduit (in red).

In what I consider to be a continuation of underground exploration traditions, our entry point ended up being but a few feet away from the manhole that the older gentleman from Verdun once used. A three foot high drainage pipe within Parc Angrignon, just large enough the crawl through, provides a 21st century means of access.

Inside the Conduit.

Manhole chamber (and groundwater infiltration) underneath Blvd. Verendrye

The conduit itself resembles many of Montreal’s older concrete sewers, but with pronounced horizontal lines from the wooden forms that were used during construction. For a century old tunnel, it’s in excellent. The water is, at times, thigh-deep, but it is slow moving and not that much of an issue assuming you have the stamina to wade through it for long periods of time. Sewage can be detected, but for the most part the water is cleaner than what is usually encountered underground in Montreal. I wouldn’t want to drink it, but I wouldn’t mind falling in it either.

As a testament to its cleanliness, small fish can often be spotted over the course of its length. During one trip, I even came across about a half dozen mud-puppies that somehow got swept into the system and have done their best to make this dark tunnel their home.

One of many Mud-puppies spotted inside the conduit. This particular one was close a foot in length.

The Montreal Water Famine of 1913

By the winter of 1913, work had begun to widen the canal an additional 25 feet. This further widening was commenced to help generate electrical power for the city’s lighting systems. Rather than have to expropriate additional land on the south side of the canal, the City decided to make the enlargement on the north shore instead, close to where the conduit ran. It’s here where all sorts of problems began.

In the midst of this second enlargement, a two-foot long portion of the conduit was damaged. Workers did their best to try and repair the break, but a few days later, sixty feet worth of the conduit collapsed. The damage left close to 300,000 people in Montreal without a proper water supply. Adding insult to injury, the event occurred on Christmas Day  — never a good time for catastrophe to strike.

New York Times headline from Dec 28th, 1913.

City workers scrambled to repair the break while the people of Montreal had to receive water through water carts or from properties fortunate enough to have access to Cartesian wells. In one instance, Ogilvy’s department store, with a 1,200 foot deep artesian well in its basement, was able to provide water for people in the area. Meanwhile, large factories such as the Angus Shops had to be temporarily closed, while streets were patrolled day and night to react quickly to the first sign of fire.

Buckets of water being handed out from a casks during the shortage.

The  conduit was eventually repaired four days after its collapse using sections of boiler plate riveted together to form a steel pipe. Wasting no time, the city decided to let water through the length of the conduit as soon as the concrete surrounding the pipe had finished setting.

1913 newspaper clipping showing the repaired section of the conduit as well as the dry aqueduct to the right of it.

The joints held, and close to a century later the steel pipe can still be found. It’s a great deal rustier, but despite this, it’s holding up well.

The steel pipe section today.

While the conduit repair was successful, the city’s confidence in its water supply was severely shaken. An investigative report submitted to the city’s Board of Commissioners blamed the collapse on both the materials used during construction of the conduit as well as the excavation that had been taking place at the time.

More importantly, the report made several recommendations that would help prevent another such calamity from occurring. Based on the report, an emergency supply pipe running from the Lachine Canal to the pumping engines was soon added as a temporary solution. Ensuring a more reliable back-up supply system wouldn’t come until later.

Yesterday and Today.

It’s not clear at this point when the city stopped using the conduit  for its drinking water supply. It likely became obsolete by the time the filtration plant was put into operation during the 1920s. Impure water running the length of the open aqueduct was less of an issue after that. Repositioning of the system’s  intake pipes probably also ensured a cleaner supply as well. Also unclear is when (and why) the City officially abandoned its plans to use the aqueduct for purposes of power generation.

Fresh water flowing out from underneath a syphon that presumably connects to the Des Baillets water treatment plant. A makeshift ladder sits off to the side.

Today the conduit is still in use, both as a sewer for LaSalle and as an overflow tunnel for the Charles Des Baillets water purification plant which was built during the 1970s. The aforementioned relatively clean water and levels of sand (fare probably attributable to the plant’s filtering system.  A walled off section prevents water from the River from entering the conduit directly.  Before this, a section of the conduit has been replaced with a junction chamber with one pipe leading towards the discharge tunnel of the plant.

Junction chamber situated near the Des Baillets water treatment plant. Clean water flows in from the right and raw sewage from the left.

Given that there is currently only one known feasible entry point into the conduit, walking its entire length (and back again) would be a formidable task involving a 16 km round trip. To this date, I’ve walked roughly half its length, but I’m going to have to find other ways in if I’m to see the remaining portions.

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.

1913 map showing the area Point St. Charles formerly known as St. Gabriel. The sewer line discussed in this entry has been overlaid in red.

View this location in Google Maps.

During the beginning of the 1900s these pre-cast tile blocks had started to become a fashionable building material in some cities. It required less time and labour to install than brick which would require the setting of multiple layers to ensure both strength and leak resistance. These tile blocks aren’t at all very common here in Montreal. In fact, I’ve only seen it used in one other sewer in Hochelaga which my friends and I decided to call Ceramique Superfantastique. I’m sure there’s more of it to be found elsewhere around the city, but my guess is that the abundance of limestone on the island pretty much put an end to its use before it had a chance to take off. With limestone came concrete and when construction practices and manufacturing technologies made it a feasible building material, I’m sure Montreal was more than willing to take advantage of it.

Further inside the stretch of ceramic tile blocks, South of Rue Centre.

The rest of the sewer is fairly straightforward brickwork, but with a nice amount of calcite formations to give things a somewhat craggy, organic appearance. Beyond the tile blocks are a set of concrete beams, likely added later to help add reinforcement for the set of railway tracks above. Getting past this point would involve some serious crawling. Since none of us felt like getting a face full of sewer water, that would be as far as we’d go.

Crouched inside the brick-lined sewer underneath Rue St. Patrick.

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.

A  comment left by Jean Naimard in one of my recent entries suggested I take a look at an outfall for a storm drain in Beaconsfield. It’s actually one that my friends and I had first eyeballed this past winter. It was never exactly a high priority, but when plans to go through the next stretch of Riviere St-Pierre with a friend were canceled, I decided to go and have a further look on my own.

Enter “7-UP”

The double outlet of 7-UP. Live or Dead. The Choice is Yours.

The slightly vandalized outfall is found at the edge of Lac St-Louis near a quiet residential street. A box-shaped culvert divided in two carries the water of a small creek (Ruisseau St-James) underneath Blvd St. Charles. The creek soon re-appears on the other side of the street at the edge of someone’s side yard. Seeing this, one might be tricked into thinking there’s nothing more to it than that. However, if you wade through the channel on the left side, you’ll find a second drain that splits off to the north. Unfortunately, this is about as surprising as things get.

Looking back through to the outlet of the west conduit.

The junction where the hidden storm drain splits off to the right.

For the next kilometer it’s straight reinforced concrete pipe. It starts off six feet in diameter then gradually shrinks down to less than four at which point there’s little incentive to go any further.

Standard-issue concrete pipe. Note the lines from the varying water levels.

The only thing to remove a bit of the monotony (and the back-aches) are seven manhole chambers, each marked with dayglo spraypaint by a group of kids who were bold enough to venture through this drain on February 26th, 1972. How do I know the date? Easy. They wrote it on the wall.

The February 26th, 1972 chamber.

One chamber has a customary penis drawn on its walls (labeled “penis”, just in case there was any doubt), another “Far Out!”, while the 7th and final one simply says “7-UP.” I’m guessing even they were bored at that point.

Beyond the juvenile quirks, there isn’t much else that’s worth pointing out. The brain-like flowstone in the 7-UP chamber is a nice touch as are the different types of minnows to be found along the way. Most of the drain is filled with several inches of rock debris, giving things the look and feel of a natural creek bed. Seeing small fish swimming about only adds to this illusion.

Trips to other storm drains in Montreal, especially ones taken during the middle of summer, will often reveal an abundance of living creatures: various species of spiders and insects, crayfish, even raccoons. It’s not quite as exciting as coming across an alligator in the sewers, but given that this is the island of Montreal, you have to take what you can get.

I’ve probably done a poor job pitching things, but a storm drain like this is actually the perfect starting point for anyone interested in exploring the underground themselves. While not as exciting as some of the older sewers in Montreal, it would still give someone a good idea of what it’s like to be underground without any of the risks mentioned earlier. If there were enough interest, I’d like to take a small group of people on an interpretive walk of sorts through one of the storm drains in Pointe Claire. The one I have in mind has a few more things going for it. More on that later, though.

View this location in Google Maps.