A rare view of Rivière St. Pierre, 1956, location unknown.

I recently stumbled across a peculiar old map for the island of Montreal showing a rather fantastic depiction of the island’s former creeks and lakes. It’s unlike any other map of the island I’ve ever come across. There’s no publication date printed on it, but given its author, Aristide Beaugrand-Champagne, it likely dates from the 1920s.

Beaugrand-Champagne was one of the city’s  architects and historians. He was also the originator of the idea that Jacques Cartier first arrived in Montreal from the north via Riviere Des Prairies rather than the South. Though it had its share of proponents, it was, and still is a controversial theory. This point of Cartier’s landing is highlighted on his map along the north shore, in Sault Au Ricollet.

During his studies, Beaugrand-Champagne paid special attention to the island’s former watercourses. In doing so, he came to the conclusion that the Iroquois village of Hochelaga was once situated in Outremont rather than in an area contained somewhere within the McGill University campus— another controversial theory for its time.

Anyway, with that mini-history lesson is out of the way. Here’s Monsieur Beaugrand-Champagne’s pièce de résistance. Clicking on the map for the larger view is recommended for this one.

Beaugrand-Champagne's map illustrating the island's topgography and hyrdrology between 1542 and 1642.

It’s hard to tell how much of this map is based on Beaugrand-Champagne’s knowledge of the island’s geography and how much of it is based on his imagination or even cultural bias. Any illustration attempting to show what the island looked like more than a couple of centuries ago is bound to have a certain degree of inaccuracy, and this one is no different.

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

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

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

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

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