The Isles of Montreal
This map of “The Isles of Montreal as they have been Survey’d By the French Engineers” was drawn in 1761, one year after the British conquest of New France. It depicts most of the Hochelaga Archipelago, including the walled town of Ville-Marie, or Montreal, which at the time was home to about 5,500 people living in 900 dwellings. Montreal was still quite rural in character, consisting mainly of two-storey houses with large gardens, and it was already spreading beyond its walls into the surrounding lands.
Even though this map takes a somewhat liberal interpretation of Montreal’s geography — the mountain does not extend nearly as far west as it would seem to indicate — what strikes me is how many of the island’s natural features have been suppressed over the course of its development. Entire streams, rivers and lakes have been completely done away with, including Otter Lake and the Rivière Saint-Pierre, which ran through the area now known as the Turcot Yards.
Such geographic alterations occurred in every major city. In Boston, they were quite dramatic. Whereas the city was practically an island for the first two centuries of its existence, landfill projects in the early nineteenth century transformed it into a much chunkier peninsula. Beacon Hill was carved up in order to provide the soil that was used to fill Back Bay and the South End.
Montreal Apartments
