Lasalle

May 20th, 2009

Montreal Waterworks, Part II – Inside the Conduit

Posted by Andrew Emond

Inside the Montreal’s former water intake conduit

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.

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Posted by Andrew Emond

Categories Lasalle, Urban Exploration / Exploration urbaine, Verdun

April 27th, 2009

More Life – Biodiversity and the Parc des Rapides

Posted by Spacing

Cecilia Chen is a special contributor to Spacing Montreal. This article is part of a series of three-part series examining biodiversity along an urban shoreline.

Passing through the gate you find yourself on an extended land bridge that is raised between a water reservoir on the right and a wetland ecosystem on the left. As you walk deeper into the park, the noises of traffic are gradually superceded by the sounds of birds, wind, water and the graveled path beneath your feet.

Crossing a small bridge, you begin to hear a watery roar. Then, arriving at the long edge of the park running parallel to the river, the Lachine Rapids – called Tsi Kahnawá:here by the Mohawk who first inhabited these shores – fill your ears as your eyes follow the fast moving waters of the Saint Lawrence River tumbling down thirteen metres to the Port of Montreal. Downstream, you can see the urban skyline of Montreal.

This collaged panorama of the shoreline shows the wetlands of the parc des rapides on the left and the more manicured suburban landscape of Lasalle’s residential fabric on the right. Above: The pathway between the still-frozen reservoir on the left and the wetlands on the right, looking back towards Lasalle.

The Parc des Rapides, built upon the eroded bones of a former hydroelectricity generating dam, is a carefully planted ecosystem: a rich and deliberate interplay of native shoreline vegetation selected to attract fish, birds, and other animals – including humans – into its many folds. In a complex knot of negotiated and shared uses, Lasalle and the Ville de Montréal lease the former hydroelectric structure from Hydro Québec for the municipal park.

The Centrale de Lachine became the first hydroelectric facility to serve Montreal in 1897. It was decomissioned about 50 years later. Photo from Archives d’Hydro-Québec, F9/700771

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Categories Environment / Environnement, Lasalle, Parks and Squares / Parcs et places, Revitalisation, Waterfront / Bord de l'eau

February 5th, 2009

1ière avenue, part 2: LaSalle

Posted by Chris Erb

I’ve been putting it off for too long, but here finally is part two of my journey through Montreal’s various 1ière avenues. As I said in the last post, the purpose of this series is to visit the first street of every series of numbered streets in the city and take photos. In doing so, I hope to be able to show some of the city’s lesser-known neighbourhoods while looking for interesting things along the way. More explanation of this project can be found in the first post, linked above.

Now, on to 1re Avenue in the borough of Lasalle. I visited this street on the same rainy day as I did nearby Verdun but found a very different street. Much like Verdun, Lasalle is a former independent municipality that was merged with Montreal in 2002 and failed to de-merge afterward. This tends to be the case for many of the places where I’ve visited numbered streets which accounts for the reason why Montreal has so many. One thing I noticed in particular is the street signs in Lasalle. The borough has retained its municipal street sign design of white writing on a green background with a picture of the Moulin Fleming. I find it to be a very attractive street sign and it is nice to see local street signs that give a sense of place, rather than a generic sign for the entire city.

The street is only three blocks long on a typical Montreal grid. The series of numbered streets go west until 90e Avenue near Lachine but is only a regular series of numbered streets until 16e Avenue where the grid stops, and the streets become more suburban. After that, numbered streets only show up periodically with the streets in between having proper names.

The street begins at the Lachine Rapids at boul Lasalle. A beautiful park runs along the waterfront from Verdun all the way to Lachine.

When thinking of Lasalle, the image of those white brick duplexes with the garages in the basement so typical of inner-ring Montreal suburbs usually first come to mind. This generalisation is indeed more-or-less true, however, Lasalle has a sizable old section, mostly centred in the area with streets on a grid from the Douglas Hospital to about 9e Avenue. 1re Avenue is typical of this old section of Lasalle, mostly populated by two story, brick duplexes with exterior staircases to the second floor apartment.

Rue Centrale is a commercial artery that intersects with the numbered streets running through the old section of Lasalle and acts as a kind of main street. It’s a pleasant little street with a nice neighbourly feel and is more or less intact with few empty lots or parking where buildings should be.