The Craig Street Sewer, January 2010

“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.

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Grit removal tanks of Montreal's wastewater treatment plant.

Montreal’s wastewater treatment plant can be found at the far east end of the island in Pointe Aux Trembles. It’s the largest in North America and ranks the third largest in the world- capable of handling 32 cubic metres of water a second.  Raw sewage (usually) ends up here via a network of deep-level tunnels referred to as interceptors. These interceptors form a ring around the island, collecting and distributing wastewater to the plant before it has a chance to enter the surrounding rivers. To get a better sense of how the interceptors work, you can have a look at the entry I wrote  here.

Montreal's wastewater treatment plant as seen from Microsoft Live Maps.

While it’s an impressive system in terms of its scope and capacity, the treatment process itself leaves much to be desired. In fact, it’s actually one of the worst in Canada. A national “report card” issued by the Sierra Club in 2004 gave the city’s treatment process a grade of F-. The only other city to receive a grade worse than Montreal was Victoria, a place which doesn’t even have a treatment process in place yet.

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Tell-tales suspended inside the Cote-St-Paul collector sewer.

One thing that’s been bugging me for the past couple of years is what purpose these suspended metal poles serve. They’re always found close to the top edge of a dropshaft that’s six or more feet in height.  Sometimes there are just one or two, or in the case of the sewer I was in last night, sometimes there’s a large batch of them. They’re always the same width and made with the same material. There are also eyelets at both ends of the pole: a large one at the top that fits through the fixture in the ceiling and a smaller one at the bottom. Both the old more recently built sewer systems in Montreal have them.

I once came across some blueprints from the City which referred to these poles as “tell-tales” but that doesn’t really “tell” me anything at all. They’re fairly light and swing back and forth easily if pushed. They’re not robust enough to serve as safety features, though they do come in handy for hanging onto if ever you want to step out close to the edge.  A chain or an actual railing would be much more practical if that’s what they were supposed to be used for.

They also don’t seem to be there to measure flow rates or water levels. The trash that accumulates on them gives some indication as to how high things might have been in the past, but wouldn’t provide the degree of accuracy to satisfy hydraulic engineers.

I know that tell-tales are used in sailing to help gauge wind direction and speed. I suppose that if there was a large enough air disturbance in the sewer, these poles might start start moving a little. Water falling down a dropshaft can definitely cause changes in air pressure which can often lead to problems, but I’d be surprised if the poles were hung up to indicate  that. I mean,  it also seems like a pretty low-rent way of doing it.

Anyone else out there have any ideas? Please don’t make me call the City’s Public Works department to get an answer for this one. You’re my only hope.

Update – As a friend of mine pointed out:

“I’m pretty sure the dangling things are warning devices similar to these. They’d indicate to anyone riding on top of a car an impending area of low clearance like an underpass. Underground, I suppose if a worker was disoriented and/or his flashlight died, a smack to the face from one these would prevent him from walking off a ledge.”

Works for me! Thanks, Rich.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Inside the Molson Collector, somewhere beneath Rue Dickson in 2007

When it comes to Montreal’s underground achievements, the Metro system tends to get a lot of the attention. Its sewer system, on the other hand— not so much. This isn’t really all that suprising. The subway system is something people both use and see all the time, and it’s also a fair bit more complicated than a network of tunnels designed to carry fluids. Still, in terms of tunneling achievements, the sewers built during the 1950s are worth taking a closer look at if only because they’re so often ignored.

Decarie Raimbault Collector during construction in 1958.

By the time ground was broken for the first metro line in 1962, close to a decade had already passed since tunnels just as large and as long had been dug out below the surface of the island. As the populations of communities like Ville St. Laurent and Ahuntsic exploded during the post-war boom, problems began to surface beneath the ground. The existing sewer system, with pipes no larger than seven feet in diameter, could no longer handle the demands being put on it. Floods were increasing as were the number of complaints from people getting fed up with sewage spilling out into the streets and basements.

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Water main installation on Sherbrooke Street, 1927 (Photo source: City of Montreal Archives)

Sewer or water main construction, 1927 or 1928. (Photo source: City of Montreal Archives)

Electric cable installation, taken between 1929-1931 (Photo source: City of Montreal Archives)

I’ll be posting more of my own photos soon. In the meantime, here are three that I had scanned from the city archives that I really like, mostly for the people seen in each one.  As with most of the images on my site, clicking on each one will bring up the larger view.