Garrison Greek Relief Sewer, Toronto, Image Size: 16" x 11.5", Edition: 100

The photograph above, along with two others, are currently available for sale via the Toronto-based Circuit Gallery. The gallery is collaborating with Alphabet City to offer a series of limited edition artworks drawn from Alphabet City’s projects and publications. The first collaboration relates to WATER, which was co-published with MIT Press. My partner in crime, Michael Cook of vanishingpoint.ca also has three photos available.

Part of the proceeds from the sale of these photographs will be used to pay for the legal fees incurred during my arrest earlier in the year. If you’ve ever been interested in purchasing one of my photos, this would be the perfect opportunity.

In case you’re wondering about the quality of the prints, from the Circuit Gallery website, These editions, supervised by the artist, are printed with archival pigment inks on a matte Fine Art paper. The ink and paper combination have a display permanence rating of 150+ years. All our prints are made with the greatest attention to quality and a concern for permanence.

Thanks to Claire and Susanna at Circuit Gallery for coordinating this, and to Michael as well.

One of the good things to come out of last year’s article in the Montreal Gazette about lost rivers was  the opportunity to meet Katarina Soukup of Catbird Productions. After reading the story, Katarina emailed me expressing interest in producing a documentary on the subject using my work as a starting point. I was admittedly a bit skeptical that anything would happen, but after meeting up with her in person it became clear that this was something she was enthusiastic and intent on developing.

A few months later with a director now on board, I brought a small film crew underground during which I rambled on about my experiences and the history of Montreal’s sewer system. The result was this short promotional video that would be used to pitch the documentary to various parties. (Just in case it isn’t obvious, I’m the devilishly handsome fellow wearing the hat and chest-waders)

Since then the documentary has received funding from the National Film Board, Radio Canada and Studio XX. The scope of the project has also grown to include other cities around the world that have made attempts to recover or raise awareness of ‘lost rivers.’

Production is set to begin later this year. More details can be found here or on the project’s Facebook page.

The past month or so has been interesting, to say the least. I suppose that followers of this site are used to sporadic updates by now. Usually it’s because other things are keeping me busy or distracted and while my trip to Greece has certainly kept me busy, this last bout of inactivity stemmed from more serious matters.

A local news broadcast from Toronto is a good a primer to the situation:

While I could probably write an entire entry detailing the inaccuracies of that one report, it did get a few key details correct. A friend and I were arrested after a passerby noticed the two of us entering a sewer system in a residential area of Toronto and decided to call the police. While we were underground, blissfully unaware of the situation brewing above us, an entire fleet of emergency response teams were brought in to investigate the situation.

It was obvious that they reacted to the situation without knowing just who or what they were dealing with; this isn’t exactly the sort of thing that happens on a routine basis in any city. Workers proceeded to enter the sewer via a winch and harness system. They assumed that conditions below them were too dangerous to navigate, so only travelled as far through the system as the ropes they were tethered to allowed.

A stretch deemed too dangerous to navigate through without the aid of ropes.

Getting caught was the result of bad luck, but also poor decisions, the kind that are easy to make after doing this for years without ever having faced any serious consequences. You begin to feel less nervous about doing things over time, like opening up manhole covers while other people are nearby. You start to forget about the little things that can often lead to consequences.

While I’ve had run-ins with various people (including police officers) in the past, misunderstandings have usually been cleared up on the spot. Based on what I’ve heard, this has generally been the case with other people around the world involved in similar activities. So it’s easy to feel complacent and maybe even a bit cocky, but I suppose it was a given that something like this would happen eventually.

After the police discovered the two of us, or rather, after we gave ourselves up, we were brought to the station (yes, in handcuffs) and questioned individually. My policy is always to be up-front about everything I do. I showed them the pictures on the camera , told them why I was down there, gave them the URL for this site and hoped for the best.

Some officers found the situation humourous, while others were astonished that two people would deliberately enter what they thought was a shit-infested tunnel that spelled instant death. It seemed as though everyone there who had never set foot underground before in their lives was suddenly an expert. “You two are lucky to be alive!”

Aside from their concern, jokes were made and compliments were paid to our photography, but it was hard to laugh along or feel flattered knowing that there was a chance that I might receive a criminal record. In most scenarios, a situation like this would warrant a provincial-level trespassing fine, which is a touch more expensive than a parking ticket. That wasn’t going to be the case here.

After several hours we were fingerprinted and had our mugshots taken, and the two of us were let go for the night, and told that under no circumstances were we to talk to one another outside of legal council. Of course, we were also forbidden to enter sewers or areas related to “public works.”

After arriving home, interview requests started showing up in my inbox from various media outlets who had caught wind of the story, probably by listening in on events using police scanners. They only escalated over the course of the day. Knowing how often dialogue can be misquoted or taken out of context, I decided it was best not to respond to any of it. I also avoided commenting on the situation on my site.

Subtitle from the Toronto Star. I have no idea where they got the term 'undergrounding' from.

The following day, our man bites dog story had officially entered the daily news cycle and while a lot of it was inaccurate and exaggerated, it didn’t go as terribly as I expected. Maybe this was the result of the two of us having a good amount of material online that even the laziest of journalists could use as a reference point. It probably also helped having intelligent people who spoke well on our behalf. Also, if the comments left on news sites were any indication, there was a good deal of public support behind us. (And anyone who reads online comments knows that they’re often the last place you can expect to find support.)

24 hours later news agencies had moved onto the next big strange story, which was something of a relief. I’m not adverse to being in the media, but I disliked the idea of having what I do being framed around the arrest. The legal aspect isn’t something that I generally talk about here, partly because I feel it would be distracting, but also because I wouldn’t want anyone to get the impression that it’s a reason why I do any of this.

Nice headline in an otherwise terrible article. (See link at bottom of entry to read it in its entirety.)

While the criminal charge was considered to be light, the following days I, along with my wife, were a bit nervous about what might happen. The court date was set at the end of the month, but not having ever been in this sort of situation before, we were dependent on the generous levels of support and advice we received from family, friends and strangers alike.

The more advice we received, the clearer it became that the charge of mischief wasn’t something that would stick in relation to our situation. At the same time, we decided it would be a good idea to obtain some form of legal representation. We wasted no time in finding a lawyer who confirmed that it would be difficult to find us guilty of a charge that’s usually reserved for acts of vandalism or other activities where ill-intent is involved. Still, it wasn’t clear how long it might take for the charges to be dropped or how much any of it was going to cost us financially.

As was anticipated, the charges were eventually withdrawn. We received this good news a couple of weeks ago during the first leg of my hiatus here in Greece and are relieved to put it behind us. Plus, I’m glad I can now talk to my friend without requiring the presence of a lawyer.

While Athens seems to have its share of things worth seeing below street level, it’s not worth the risk – any run-ins with the law here might turn out worse than the one in Toronto. Language barriers, unclear trespassing laws and one of the highest urban population densities in the world probably wouldn’t make for the best combination. Aside from this though, I’m looking forward to photographing another city using a different frame of reference. And I still have a backlog of entries to post about Montreal that I’ll post over the next few months.

Lastly, I’d like to thank everyone who offered their support during the course of this past ordeal. I feel indebted to those who took the time to send kind words or to offer advice. It would be easy for something like this to make me feel discouraged or defeated, but on the contrary, I’m left feeling more validated. Thank you for your kindness.

Further reading:

Toronto Star  article
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/790701–two-men-arrested-for-late-night-foray-into-sewers?bn=1#photo

CBC news report
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2010/04/05/sewer-explorers.html

The Hour (based on an interview I did for a local paper)
http://www.hour.ca/news/news.aspx?iIDArticle=19676

Spacing Montreal article (Thanks, Alanah)
http://spacingmontreal.ca/2010/04/07/blogger-arrested-in-toronto-sewer-forray/

Mischief, as defined by the Canadian Criminal Code
http://www.efc.ca/pages/law/cc/cc.430.html

The Garrison creek and sewer system
http://www.lostrivers.ca/GarrisonCreek.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrison_Creek

http://humanriver.ca/?page_id=39

Other sewers and storm drains in toronto
http://vanishingpoint.ca/d_tor.html
http://pipecleaner.wordpress.com/

Exarthia neighbourhood, Athens, Greece.

So I’m  back in Greece again this year. After getting married here last summer, my wife and I decided to make a return trip and stay a for an extended period of time. Four and a half months to be exact. We’re just over two weeks in and are starting to get settled into our little apartment here in Athens. I’m really looking forward to getting to know this city better. Right now the scale (and sprawl) of Athens is a bit overwhelming, but it’s nice to know I’ll have the opportunity to digest it properly.

On the topic of underground matters,  in lieu of recent events (more on this later) I’ve decided to use the time here to photograph other subject matter for a change. I’m just not quite sure what that’s going to be. In the meantime, I’ve been doing a lot of walking around, investigating different neighbourhoods, trying to get my head around the city a bit first before I start committing things to film.

I have been playing around with an old Polaroid Land camera and Fuji instant film though. While not exactly my style, I have to admit it works well for certain things here. I don’t have a film scanner with me so I had to improvise by taping the negative to a sheet of glass, holding it up against the sky and taking a photo of it with the digital camera. A bit of tweaking in Photoshop and voila:

Butchers, Athens central market (Varvakios Agora)

Anyway, that’s all about Greece for now. I can’t say that Montreal will be on my mind so often, but there’s still a lot of  material that I’ve accumulated while journeying beneath its streets, and I look forward to having the time to write about it all while here.

“The drains, too, this hot weather, at their grated bars tell tales of the stagnant petulance imprisoned within them.” – regarding the Craig Street sewer, Montreal Witness, 1872.

“It was a constant fight against humidity, disease and decay. It seemed as though all the crap that had oozed from the slums of Montreal for over a century had collected here.” – Marcel Talon’s account of the sewer, 1993.

Since launching this website just over a year ago, three questions I’ve been asked most frequently have involved what sewers smell like, how I get down there to begin with, and whether or not I’ve ever run into anyone else while inside of them. The first two make a good deal of sense. After all, who wouldn’t want to know what raw sewage smells like? And how does one get inside a sewer?

But the third question involving encounters with other people is a curious one mostly because it hasn’t happened yet. Not only that, but I can’t ever imagine it happening either- at least not here in Montreal. Our sewers aren’t exactly the most easily accessible things in the world, nor are they the most hospitable of  places. I’m not even sure how often people working for the city venture underground to have a look at things these days. The preferred method seems to involve the use of remote controlled video inspection systems.

The question likely stems from the often mythical stories from elsewhere around the world involving people found underground, from the “Mole People” of New York City, to the Cataphiles of Paris. Of course, Hollywood movies and various popular works of fiction have long relied on the underground as a staple home to a variety of miscreants and monsters. Perhaps it’s scenes such as this that come to mind whenever a city’s sewers are mentioned:

Most well-known stories involving the underground tend to be set in places other than Montreal though. CBC journalist Brian Stewart once stated: “No one has ever sought to rhapsodize over Montreal’s sewers, however, and certainly no one ever famous has seen fit to hide there.”

But despite this, it would be a mistake to pretend that there hasn’t been a long history of people who have passed through these systems.

For the most part, this aspect of Montreal’s history may not exactly be the stuff that legends are made of, but it is one that deserves to be documented in more detail than it has already.

Earliest Accounts

“When we see men at work on the sewers from time to time, the generality of us citizens are impressed that some wise movement is being made towards  ameliorating the sanitary condition of the city. - letter to the editor, Montreal Evening Post,  1879

The earliest records of Montreal’s sewers tend to be fairly cut and dry affairs. Most are either city planning documents or financial records and references to people tend to be limited either to the names of engineers or foremen. Occasionally we’re given the number of workers employed, but little else emerges from the bureaucratic muck. It isn’t until the 1870s where we begin to get a bit more detail beyond mere technical and financial matters.

A foreman’s daily work journal from 1877 detailing the reconstruction of the Colborne Street sewer makes reference to workers unable to continue due “sore hands.” Elsewhere in the journal  remarks are made about the weather (“splendid day”), which is about as much personal interjection as one could hope to find in such a document.

Fortunately, newspaper articles written during this era offer a bit more colour to the projects taking place in the city. As its name would imply, an 1876 issue of the Canadian Illustrated News contains drawings depicting the reconstruction of the Craig Street Sewer. This 8 foot tunnel which took three years to complete, presently runs underneath rue St Antoine. It was built to help improve the poor drainage of the smaller sewer set in place years earlier. It would  also become the principal waste conduit for the city. For the first time, not only do we get to see a picture of a sewer in Montreal, but we get to see the workers as well.

Details of illustrations depicting work on the Craig Street Sewer during 1876.

The scans from the paper are frustratingly dark and fuzzy, but here we see the faces of men working amongst the stationary wooden derricks, the crib work, and work horses pulling wagons. In one frame we also see an excited looking group of men collecting their money during pay day.

"Pay Day at the works"

An article written a year later in the Montreal Daily Witness reveals that the crew for the Craig Street Tunnel works was “91 French-speaking to 61 English-speaking.” Typical of the time, this French majority is described as being “excessive.” Another article states that of this crew, “not a life had been lost and accidents had been rare” and as proof of the project’s success in this particular area, we are told that the physician’s bill was a mere $32.

Also in the Daily Witness, two years after the completion of the tunnel, is found a wonderful account involving one writer’s trip through the Craig Street sewer. The article describes the sights, the sounds and, yes, even the smell of the sewers. It is a report that’s as true today as it was back then.

“It was a happy disappointment to find so little odor present, after having heard so much about sewer gas; the smell was just perceptible and that was all. The atmosphere was unpleasantly warm and the work of wading through the water rather fatiguing.”

Through this article we also learn that boats were once used for sewer inspections, as revealed in a second-hand anecdote involving two workers almost getting swept away after losing a pole used for steering. Despite this near-dire story though, the underlying tone of the story is one of adventure and often humour.

“The garments assumed for the occasion had evidently been designed with a view to utility rather than beauty, and the good people who stared at the uncouth apparitions assembled in Victoria Square might well be excused for their curiosity. “

Decades later, news from this same sewer would take on a much darker tone after an eight year old girl fell into it through a manhole cover that a city worker had inadvertently left open. She was quickly swept away with the sewer’s current. The news made the New York Times.

New York Times article from the Spring of 1921.

Through more detailed articles in the Montreal Gazette, we learn that grappling irons were dragged through the sewer, and one brave soul from Verdun even donned a diving suit to search for the missing girl- a task that many men were said to have refused. Despite these efforts her body was never found.

Things Pick Up Underground

In the beginning of the 20th century, more details begin to emerge involving work in the sewers, mostly during their construction. Waves of immigration from countries such as Italy and Poland add new players to the labour scene, new contractors and further tensions amongst workers often desperate to find work. New tools such as mechanical trenchers also begin to be put to use, thus reducing labourers required for certain operations such as trenching. Concrete begins to replace masonry requiring a different skill sets and much experimentation as was the case with the Notre Dame de Grace sewer.

Sewer construction slowed down over the course of World War I, but during the years afterwards, in particular the Great Depression, an enormous amount of work underground was accomplished. Montreal really had no choice at this point, due in part to an aging sewer system no longer able to keep up with the growth of the city. Newly paved streets in particular caused excessive amounts of water to enter the sewers.

One month prior to the great Stock Market Crash, over seven million dollars was authorized by Montreal’s City Council to cover over Riviere St. Pierre, a project which would result in one of Montreal’s largest sewers.

In the midst of the depression work continued to increase thanks in part to an enormous “work-for-relief” scheme devised to replace direct aid for the unemployed. Between local, provincial and national levels of government, an additional 11 million was spent to help put an estimated 10,000 men to work building fifteen different sewers.

It must have been viewed as win-win situation for all involved, especially from the City’s point of view. On one hand, it would receive an upgraded sewer system built using a large, and readily accessible supply of labour, and on the other, the “social menace” of direct aid could be avoided entirely. In one telling quote from the City’s initial report, the project could help deter “a form of Socialism analogous with the dole system of Britain, destined above all to erect parasitism and shiftlessness into a social system.”

Sewer work in Verdun, 1938

A few details of this workforce can be gleaned from the Gazette archives. Preference was given to married men and to those with families. They were paid upwards of 40 cents an hour- a rate higher than what was commonly paid.

“Inspectors will be named by the city who will make contact with parish authorities and secure lists of the biggest families in Montreal. From that list will be chosen the men who are to go work for the winter be removed from direct relief.”

Another article further explains that “if some men are unable to stand the work, or will not work, replacements will be made in the same fashion. “Won’t works’ will be dealt with severely, according to a plan now being studied at the City Hall.”

The Iberville collector sewer, September 2007.

“Donning rubber boots, rubber coats and hats, reporters scrambled down a man-hole and spent nearly an hour learning all about Montreal’s biggest east end sewer at first hand. Obliging company officials and sewer commission engineers explained the construction details as the curious news-gatherers- carrying flashlights, and warned not to smoke – waded about in water which was sometimes up to a foot deep. Reporters were assured that the water was not “sewage” – they took their word for it.”

Incidentally, two panels over on the same page is another story about a local politician scheming to have unemployed men trucked out to Ste Therese to collect peat from bogs to be used as fuel. “So certain am I that the majority of men on the dole are anxious for anything to keep them employed, I am going to try all kinds of things to keep my ward men busy.”

Evidently the sewers weren’t enough to keep everyone busy.

Clearer Faces

Meilleur Atlantique sewer inspection photo from 1955

“The big collector sewers are large enough for two cars to pass and the maintenance men walk through them daily on inspection trips. That, says Lebeau, introduces the element of danger. A brief rainstorm in the city can fill the passages to the top in a few minutes and men trapped below would drown. Often when men are underground a man is stationed on the surface with a barometer and to watch the weather if rain threatens.”

Salut! A hello from the past inside the Meilleur Atlantique overflow conduit.

While it threatens to veer towards hyberbole, it’s the sort of article that often does its subject matter justice.

“Sometimes the brick walls, dripping and aging in the dark, are suddenly washed golden by the flashlight beams of wading men. And as their lights play on twisting currents destined finally for the ocean, this scene, in this place, is not without a fleeing and eerie beauty.”

More interesting are the quotes from the sewer inspectors themselves who speak of their encounters with rats, the odd “wild cat” as well as the hazards involved in their occupation. “You can only work here if you don’t think about it… about what’s in the tunnel. I keep busy, I never think about it, so it never bothers me.”

An (almost) Perfect Sewer Plan

No story about a city’s history of people and sewers would be complete without at least one good story involving criminal activity. While Montreal’s sewers have been the subject of countless contracting scams and likely used for the discarding of illegal substances, only one case involving criminals stands out as being noteworthy- even legendary.

In 1992, career criminal Marcel Talon hatched a simple plan: dig a tunnel from the Craig Street sewer into the basement level of the Bank of Montreal. It’s here where money is (or once was) held temporarily before being placed into vaults. Knowing this, Talon gathered together a small group of accomplices and worked out the timing so that they could walk in, hold the place up, get downstairs, load up their bags with money. While the police had the building surrounded, they’d use their tunnel as an escape route.

As mentioned toward the beginning of this entry, the Craig Street sewer presently runs below rue Saint-Antoine, and conveniently enough, passes very close to the north side of the Bank of Montreal building. All that would be required would be the digging of an additional tunnel roughly 30 feet in length.

Detail of City Sewer map showing highlighted paths of the Craig Street Sewer and Talon's excavation.

Of course all this required months worth of research and preparation. Using sewer maps from the city’s planning department, they decided the best entry point into the sewer would be roughly 2kms East of the bank using a manhole near St. Denis and rue Saint-Louis. Neither the manhole they used or the small side-pipe they used to enter the Craig Street sewer appear to exist today.

As to not arouse any suspicion before entering the sewers, they disguised themselves as city workers, and went so far as to spend $35,000 modifying a truck to look like an official city works vehicle. Since the manhole was situated at the edge of the street curb, they simply had someone park overtop of the manhole while they were busy underground.

Talon's entry point at the corner of rues St. Louis and Bonsecours.

An inflatable zodiac, complete with an electric motor was used to get from their entry point over to the area that was to be tunneled. The sewer usually only has two feet of water flowing through it. Not only this but it’s very much full of a century’s worth of sediment including a good number of rocks brought down through the sewer’s snow dumps. Given this, they went so went so far as to build three dams to raise the water level high enough to accommodate their boat. From there it was (almost) all smooth sailing.

They smashed their way through the side wall of the sewer and in early spring of 1993 began work on the tunnel towards the bank, building dykes around the entranceway to prevent it from flooding during wet weather. Judging by photos it appears as though they made a fine mess of the sewer during the process.

The entrance to Talon's tunnel.

Today this section of the Craig Street sewer is considerably tidier looking, but traces of Marcel Talon’s tunnel can still be found today. Its entrance, wisely bricked off by the City.

Talon's tunnel (on right) as found today.

In order to prevent their 1.5 meter tunnel from falling in on itself, they used wooden beams and telescoping metal poles for support. Thirteen meters worth of excavation and an unspecified number of days later they reached the foundations of the bank which they spent close to a day smashing (and burning) their way through. Eventually they reached a point where a single drill-hole could be made through to the money room. Once they had determined the thickness of the walls they were able to dig out a section that left a 7cm thick section between the tunnel and the room on the other side.

Talon's makeshift tunnel between rue St. Antoine and the Bank of Montreal's foundations.

The idea was that the remainder could then be taken care of with thermal lances and magnesium bars. On the day of the hold-up, someone inside the tunnel was to be given the signal to start the burning process. Upwards of 200 million dollars would be gathered up and then they’d escape.

All this was supposed to have happened and most likely would have had it not for one occurrence that put an end to their planned heist. While Talon and his gang were elsewhere, a tree, no less than 10cm in diameter fell through into the tunnel. It was the result of sub-surface erosion or perhaps the weight of a snowplow. Regardless of the cause, it left a meter wide sink-hole in the sidewalk in front of the bank. The city was immediately called in to investigate. From that point on it was game over.

Despite the best efforts of police and other investigators, the would-be thieves were never found. It wasn’t until Talon, later arrested for the robbery of an armoured truck, signed an immunity deal with Crown prosecutors in 1994  that all was revealed. A year later, Talon authored a book about his criminal activities entitled Et Que Ca Saute! Loosely translated: hurry it up!

A decade later, the book was used as inspiration for the movie Le Derniere Tunnel, set in Montreal and not filmed in the Craig Street Sewer, but in the nearby and significantly drier Brock Street tunnel.

Urban Explorers Take Over

As mentioned earlier, sewers are no longer frequented by people to the same extent that  they once were. It’s been close to twenty years since the island last constructed a large-scale sewer and occupational health and safety regulations have pretty much ensured that sewer inspection gangs are a thing of the past. In addition, sewers are routinely dealt with externally. Instead, high-power vacuums attached to trucks are used to deal with clogs while CCTV or SONAR devices get used for actual inspections. That only leaves people such as myself and a few other like-minded urban explorers left roaming these systems the old-fashioned way.

For the most extent, it’s been urban explorers who have been keeping  the tradition of sewer-walking alive and well. As a bonus many have taken the time to document their experiences. Of note are underground trailblazers Urban Exploration Montreal (UEM) whose  website holds a nice record of their first foray into a storm drain back in 2002. While they never did venture into the combined sewers of Montreal, they did make valuable (and inspiring) inroads through other equally impressive underground systems.

Adding to the list of contributors are nel58 who stepped things up considerably when she, TaP and D-v-S delved into the Saint-Pierre Collector during the winter of 2005. News of their adventure soon made it to Toronto and elsewhere via the website UER and  helped establish Montreal as a city that had great potential for underground exploration. Having heard of her endeavors, I wasted no time in meeting up with her when I first moved to Montreal in the fall of 2006.

Looking into the small pipe leading towards the Craig Street Sewer, March 2007. (Photo courtesy of nel58)

Shortly thereafter we nervously made our way into the Craig Street sewer. Ill-equipped and unsure of what we were getting ourselves into, we received our first taste of a 125 year-old sewer. We were unaware of the history behind it and of the people who had made their way through it prior to our arrival. Much like the reporter from the Montreal Witness in 1877, we were taken in by the sewer’s peculiar beauty. From that point forward we only wanted to see more.

www.undermontreal.com/gallery/historical-photos/

While in Toronto this past weekend, I managed to take a (very) quick dip down into an overflow section of the Garrison sewer system. Thanks to Michael, Jon, Jeremy and Bryan for the short but sweet tour. I plan on setting aside an entire weekend in the near future to be able to see more of what this historic system has to offer.

I’ve always been curious about how well underground locations can be recorded using digital video. Up until fairly recently my only experiences with video came through point and shoot digital cameras. Of course the quality left a lot to be desired and I wasn’t really sure what it would take to get better results. So when a friend of mine in Toronto told me that he wanted to film a piece underground using some professional recording gear on loan from Ryerson University, I was more than eager to help him out.

I ended up taking him (along with a sound man and my wife) to ‘Humble Howard’ , a beautiful century-old brick sewer that I thought would work well enough. That said,  I was initially disappointed by the raw footage that I first saw from the camera. Despite my best attempts to illuminate the 3 meter high pipe using all the light power I had with me at the time, things still looked relatively dark and grainy. I’m starting to think there’s no way around it unless you’re shooting in relatively close quarters.

Regardless of that, though, he did end up putting together the lovely mosaic above and while it lacks in brightness, it does a great job of depicting the  actual experience of being underground. Being there is often slow and repetitive, and even meditative to a certain extent.

The audio in his piece is also a good representation of  the lingering sound that comes after cars drive overtop of manhole covers. It always adds an interesting acoustic element and  is often a good way of figuring out where you are in relation to the world above. Sometimes it’s good to know if it’s a park or a busy traffic intersection that you’re under, especially if you need to make a quick escape.

Also on the subject of audio (and other people’s work) is a project by drainer/photographer/musician Jon Muldoon who went out and sampled sounds inside various Toronto storm drains. He then mixed them together with various instruments to create ear-pleasing ambient soundscapes. After hearing his work, I’m tempted to go and pick up a stereo recorder and try to put together my own Merzbow-inspired underground soundtrack. I’m note sure the results would be quite as tranquil sounding as Jon’s recordings (Montreal tend to be far noisier than Toronto’s) but it would be worth trying at least once.

Finally, in other news from around the creative world, my wife’s been busier than me in keeping her blog updated in anticipation for her collection of short stories to be published by Invisible in the Fall of this year. Go check it out. Here.

I just returned from Vancouver where for the past two weeks I’ve been working on Vectorial Elevation– a large-scale  interactive light installation created by artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. The piece uses  20 10,000-watt robotic searchlights situated around English Bay.  Just a touch more light than I’m used to working with. Using www.vectorialvancouver.net, people can create their own virtual light “sculpture” online which will eventually appear in real life. Fun stuff, if I don’t say so myself.

In other news, I’ll be giving a presentation about my experiences underneath Montreal this Thursday at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. More details here.

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.