The Old Steel Foundry

My first experience of urban exploration came thanks to an abandoned steel foundry on St. Ambroise St. in St. Henri, on which there was still a piece of 1995 referendum-era graffiti urging us to vote “Oui.” My girlfriend and I walked around the building, exploring some of the more easily accessible areas on the ground floor.

Just as we were about to leave, two kids from the neighbourhood came up to us. “Do you want to see something cool?” they asked. We followed them to a steel garage door that had been pried open, squeezing ourselves underneath and into a dark building.

The boys ran up a staircase to the left. Upstairs was a large room, brightly lit by the setting sun, filled with huge piles of debris, toilets and empty bottles. “GOGGLE AREA,” read a sign hanging crookedly from the ceiling. “Wear your safety goggles. Portez vos lunettes de sûreté.” As I looked around, flipping through the pages of 1980s fashion magazines that were sitting in a pile on the floor, the two boys started picking up bottles and smashing them on the ground.

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Montreal’s Lost Rivers

In Montreal, “river” usually means one of two things: the all-important St. Lawrence River, godlike in its power and presence, and the Rivière des Prairies, whose lazy nature is perhaps better reflected in its informal English name, the Back River. Before it was urbanized, however, Montreal Island was covered with creeks and rivers. Some have disappeared altogether, but many still exist, entombed in stone and concrete well beneath the city surface.

Andrew Emond, who first made his mark with well-seen photographs of abandoned buildings in Toronto and Montreal, recently embarked upon a quest to explore subterranean Montreal. His new blog, Under Montreal, is not only visually striking, it’s well-written and well-researched, with some fascinating entries on the city’s lost rivers. “Charting the evolution of the island’s creeks can often be a daunting task,” he writes. “Older maps from the early 1800s show only approximate paths with many minor creeks apparently deemed unworthy of inclusion. By the time more detailed maps started to emerge around 1820, we see that many of these watercourses had already started to disappear.”

Barely any traces remain. There’s a small stretch of creek—the ruisseau Provost, or Springrove Creek—remaining in an Outremont park, but that’s about it. “Even the twin ponds of Parc Lafontaine whose curves take the approximate shape of the creek that once passed through Logan’s Farm are concrete-lined fabrications,” writes Emond. To find what’s left of Montreal’s lost rivers, you have to go underground, which is exactly what Emond has done. Read about his exploration of the underground network of sewers and streams that make of the remnants of the Rivière Saint-Pierre.

Touring the Abandoned Croydon Factory

My roommate ML and I decided to accompany our other roommate to her hometown of St. Jean for the weekend. Fully decked out in summer apparel, flip flops notwithstanding, we were on our way to pick strawberries but found ourselves delayed by two hours. Having only been away from Montreal for less than 24 hours, we felt the need to infuse our day with some urban grit, and how better to do that than to take a walk around Usine Croydon, otherwise known as the former home of the Singer sewing machine factory. The gates surrounding the abandoned compound were wide open and welcoming. What followed was a tour through an art gallery of sorts — countless graffiti and paintings, mangled metal objects hanging from the ceiling, and perfect lighting.

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Scaling an Abandoned Silo

Next to the Redpath Lofts, on the Lachine Canal, is an abandoned sugar silo. Somehow, we ended up at the top.

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Illicit Rooftop Views

I took these photos from the roof of an abandoned grain silo on St. Patrick Street in Point St. Charles, right next to the Lachine Canal. I was there, in the company of two Montrealers who have snuck up to dozens of roofs over the past few years, for an article that will appear soon in the Gazette.

To access the roof, we climbed up a series of six metal ladders in a large concrete shaft filled with mysterious black sand. The effort was worth it: there is something serene about being alone on a roof with the city spread out before you. We shared a bottle of port and listened to tinny music on portable speakers.