Final sewer inspection, North Collector, Montreal, 1955. (Photo source: City of Montreal Archives) I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that manhole covers aren’t things that most people pay much attention to. I can't blame them. I probably wouldn't give them much thought either, but because they often play an essential role in allowing me to get inside the places I go, I find them a bit difficult to ignore. Even when visiting other cities and have no intention of  going underground, I’m still looking at the covers, hoping to catch a glimpse of something unique to the area or to get an idea of where things lead. I can’t help it. It's a curse. So on the off-chance that anyone else is interested in these sorts of things, I decided to put together a bit of a guide for the most common ones here in Montreal. And please, no "man hole" jokes. I've heard them all before and only eight of them are actually funny.

There's a bit of a legend in Montreal involving a locomotive sitting somewhere underneath the former Turcot Yards. While I've always liked the idea of an old train sitting around somewhere underground, I had my doubts that it could still be there. This snippet from a 1937 copy of the Montreal Star helps clear things up, claiming that it was eventually recovered. No word as to whether or not the body of the boy who "suffocated in soft, slimy mud" was ever recovered, though so maybe that's still buried under there. Who knows? (Article source: City of Montreal ...

So one of the things I've been doing lately has been examining the now-covered sections of Riviere St-Pierre in Montreal Ouest and Cote St. Luc. If one wanted to, they could walk underground from this area all the way over to Place D'Youville in Old Montreal. While I'm not quite up to that task, I am going to try to document as much of it as I can over the course of several trips. Parts one, two and three of this series can be found on Under Montreal. Here's part four: We eventually managed to find a safer way past the big slide where Controleman ended up taking a bit of a spill. Another entrance point in a relatively discreet area nearby allowed us to climb back down back into the sewer and continue further upstream. Standing below a bit of natural light coming in through the manhole shaft. Judging by the pre-cast sections of reinforced concrete pipe (RCP), it looks as though this portion was constructed over the past thirty or so years. Sometime around the 1970s, perfectly round RCP seemed to have become the standard material for sewers and storm drains in Montreal. It can make for somewhat dull underground experiences, especially when long stretches of the stuff are involved. Fortunately, this particular stretch of the sewer ended up having a nice combination of other features to help break the monotony.

Preparing the foundation for the Meilleur-Atlantique tributary sewer on north shore of Montreal. (Photo source: City of Montreal Archives) How else dispose of an immortal force No longer needed? Staunch it at its source With cinder loads dumped down? The brook was thrown Deep in a sewer dungeon under stone In fetid darkness still to live and run -- And all for nothing it had ever done Except forget to go in fear perhaps. No one would know except for ancient maps That such a brook ran water. But I wonder If from its being kept forever under, The thoughts may not have risen that so keep This new-built city from both work and sleep. - excerpt from A Brook in the City by Robert Frost, 1923 While we tend to hear a fair amount about the Lachine canal or the water surrounding Montreal, the creeks of the island never really seem to get much attention. It's not surprising given just how few are actually left. Some readers might know of Riviere St. Pierre and how it's been lost, but it's definitely not the only river or creek to have suffered this fate. Perhaps "lost" isn't the best word to use. While the majority have been removed from both the visible landscape and our collective memory, their waters can still be found beneath us, flowing through the island's sewer system.

Hello Spacing Readers, I'm Andrew, an underground explorer/photographer here in Montreal. I recently launched a site called (what else?) Under Montreal, essentially to try and better document the types of places that I've been visiting over the past few years. After Alanah came across a few of my posts, she invited me to post the odd thing here. Just a bit about myself: I'm originally from Toronto and first moved to Montreal about two and a half years ago. Since then I've been trying to get a better understanding of the entire ...