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.

So far, most of my entries have dealt with Montreal’s sewers as its the one aspect of the underground that I’ve spent the most time exploring. During my time looking into that particular system it’s been hard to avoid the city’s waterworks, both during my time traveling around (and under) and at the City Archives. While the two systems serve entirely different purposes, they still share a few things in common and often intersect in a number of different ways.

While one can’t exactly travel through the waterworks system to the same extent that you can the sewers, there are still a number of different components that can be peered into and occasionally entered.

But before we do that, a little bit of history.

The roots of both networks can be traced back to the 1800s. The waterworks was established during the early 1800s and in turn encouraged the growth of the sewer system. As the water distribution network expanded, sewers became necessary in order to help get rid of it once consumed.

Public records also illustrate how the expansion of the sewer system might have inadvertently helped distribute water into areas that were previously dependent on wells.

English transcript of minutes from a meeting in 1905 involving Montreal's Health and Sanitation Department. Source: City Archives of Montreal

There are also reports of water pipes having been laid directly along the interiors of the sewers – a practice likely inspired by Paris – but I’ve yet to see such a thing in person. For the most part, the two systems generally stay out of each others way and for obvious reasons.

In regards to subjects already covered on this site, both systems also made use of Riviere St. Pierre, but for different purposes. The city’s first collector sewer relied on the river’s flow to take wastewater away from the city and out into the harbour. Likewise, the City’s first successful waterworks system used the Verdun arm of the river to dispose of the water passing through its system’s wheelhouse.

1861 plan of the Montreal waterworks. Water leaving the wheelhouse at the bottom left corner flowed into Riviere St Pierre. A section of the proposed tailrace channel that would eventually bypass the river can be seen in red. Source: Pistard Archives

A tailrace channel leading south to the St. Lawrence was later added as a substitute for the river. This passage can still be detected today by the straight stretch of Autoroute 15 that defines the west border of Verdun. Buried beneath this tract of land is the St. Pierre Collector sewer, which, much like the tailrace that preceded it, is used today to discharge excess water from the present day filtration plant.

Attempting to explain the history of the entire waterworks system would probably be a bit too much for one post so like I’ve been doing with Riviere St. Pierre, I’ll try and break things down into several posts starting with the aqueduct.

The Montreal aqueduct (or aqueduc, in French) is an open canal that runs a length of roughly 8 kms from LaSalle to Verdun. It’s hard to miss, but it’s also quite easy to forget about and take for granted. Unlike the nearby Lachine Canal, the aqueduct doesn’t have an abundance of picturesque buildings situated alongside it. It has its charms, but more often than not it seems to be more of an obstacle than an attraction.

View Larger Map

A bike path running along the canal’s south side was added during the 1980s, but the aqueduct itself is fenced off, for security reasons and to discourage people from using it for recreational purposes. For anyone following the news in Montreal lately, this public use VS water security aspect might sound familiar. Of course, it’s never too difficult to find an opening to be able to walk along its shore where you’ll often encounter people fishing.

The City of Montreal completed the aqueduct canal in 1856 under the direction of Thomas Keefer. It was designed to bring the “purest” water from the St. Lawrence River to a point where it could then be pumped up towards the central region of Montreal. At the time of its completion, there had already been fifty years worth of attempts by private companies to distribute water to various points across the city. All had failed for a number of different reasons.

The first effort began during the early 1800s. Using a system of wooden pipes, water from a creek (or “spring”) in Cote Des Neiges was transferred around the West side of Mount Royal and into two reservoirs situated in Montreal.  Given the small amount of water available from the source, it comes as no surprise that the scheme never quite worked out.

A later system brought in water straight from the city’s harbour, but was soon abandoned when it was realized that waste from the outlet of the William Collector sewer was making the water taste “foul.”

With a rapidly expanding population during the middle of the 1800s, a series of devastating fires, and the spread of industrialization, it was clear that a more comprehensive scheme to distribute water across the city was necessary.

The solution, as proposed by the city’s Chief Engineer Thomas C. Keefer in 1852, involved the aqueduct canal to convey what was found to be the most reliable and “pure” source of water from the St. Lawrence River.

The Lachine Canal was briefly considered as a source of water, but later rejected. One of the reasons was that it was thought its polluted water might be hazardous, not so much for people, but for the iron pipes to be used throughout the distribution system.

Plan of the aqueduct system in 1854 showing the path of the rising mains (red) which delivered water to the McTavish reservoir. This map also shows the proposed path of a tailrace channel exiting South of the entrance to the Lachine canal.

The entrance point of the aqueduct was first located at point further East. Today, the broad curve at the Lasalle end of Rue Champlain is attributable to the canal’s original path.

1911 map showing the old and new entrance points to the aqueduct. The bottom entrance was later filled in during the 1920s.

At both entrances, gates designed to regulate the flow of water and to keep ice and other debris from entering the entrance to the aqueduct.

Overlooking the Lasalle end of the aqueduct in Lasalle built during the 1920s. The building in the background was constructed at the same time and currently transfers water from the river to the Charles J. Desbaillets treatment station.

After water entered the aqueduct it was fed by gravity towards a single settling basin 4kms away which encouraged rock and other solids to fall to the bottom. This was the extent of purification at the time.

It would take decades before more substantial steps would be taken to ensure cleaner water. Even by 1878, the Superintendent of the Montreal Water Works preferred the “settling” process over filtration, stating that the water “looks a great deal worse than it is.” He further suggested that purer water could be obtained “with the aid of a small filter in the house” and that boiling it was a good way of “removing all deleterious ingredients.”

Adjacent to the settling basin sat the wheelhouse containing water wheels which powered a pumping station used to force the water uphill through a series of underground iron pipes towards the McTavish reservoir- a good four kilometers away.

1913 map overlay of the Atwater treatment plant property. Click to launch the Google Maps version. A slider at the top controls the opacity between the two layers.

By the 1920s, everything on the property had been either decommissioned or demolished and replaced with a newer purification plant that could be operated using electricity. It also abandoned the settling basin in favour of  a series of filtration galleries. This same arrangement is what can be found on the property adjacent to the end of the aqueduct today, albeit with a few upgrades that have since been added.

As for the aqueduct itself, not much has changed since its conception. It’s both wider and deeper than the original, having been altered over the years to meet changing needs. For the most part, its alterations were made in order to increase the horsepower available to hydraulic (and steam) equipment. Given that the current system is now powered by electricity it is likely far larger than it needs to be.

It seems there were also grander plans to use the canal for purposes other than water distribution that were never fully realized. As the city’s chief engineer C. J. Desbaillets pointed out in 1931, “The reason for this large canal is that ultimately the city will develop power from it which will be used for various purposes by the municipal authorities.”

Despite these ambitions, the aqueduct found today is still only used to help transfer potable water using the same principles that were established in its infancy. The methods of purification have changed, and many of the system’s components have been upgraded over time, but the methods used to get water from the St. Lawrence River to downtown Montreal have remained more or less the same.

Up next: Following the waterworks system underground.