Archive for the ‘Waterways’ Category

Following the St. Pierre River of Yesteryear

15/05/2019 by Janice

What we have affectionately called the Vincent Eggen pool, the resurgence of an old marsh

As a part of the 2019 Jane’s Walks, Les Amis du Parc Meadowbrook and Revitalisation Saint-Pierre teamed up to offer two walks pertaining to the historic St. Pierre River.

Our guide, environmental historian Laetitia Deudon, is studying the river as part of her doctoral thesis at Université de Montréal/Université de Valenciennes and has done research in Montreal, Ottawa, New York and Aix-en-Provence in France to follow the evolution of the river over the centuries.

Environmental history looks at the relationships between society and its environment and how one influences the other. It works mostly with old maps, written archives, archeological data and place names (street names, notably) as well as morphogens, landscape elements that preserve the memory of age-old environments.

With respect to place names, we learned that “St. Pierre,” the name  given to the river, the lake and the old town, as well as a street, pays tribute to Baron Pierre Chevrier de Fancamp, a noble from Picardie, France. He was a founding member of the Société de Notre-Dame which financed the colonization of Montreal. Another interesting place name in Saint-Pierre is the rue du Moulin. Streets usually named as such often refer to a windmill but here, the mills were much further away, at the entrance of Lachine and the exit of lac Saint-Pierre. In this case, the street is named after a watermill that used to be in the area. We even saw a morphogen of the St. Pierre River by observing how St. Joseph Boulevard in Lachine forms an elbow shape as it would have followed the path of the old St. Pierre River.

The St. Pierre River does not easily reveal its secrets. Some maps contain errors, while others do not show the river at all but then it reappears in later maps in altogether different areas. The first maps and references date back to the middle of the 17th century. They speak of fertile prairies and abundant fish and game along its river banks. Some sections of the river would have been up to 10 or 12 feet wide and fed by rainwater, it snaked along flat areas. Man had the first impact on the river by clearing the land in the area. Then, agricultural use during the French seigniorial regime and hydraulic work accentuated the tendency of the river to jump its banks and flood the Coteau Saint-Pierre area in the late 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century.

As early as the end of the 17th century, colonial authorities tried to harness the river by straightening it to make it more navigable for transport of goods and also to feed the growing number of mills of the Sulpicians. The French tried to build a canal around 1680-1700 but found the Montreal bedrock a formidable barrier for builders used to the softer clays of Europe.

From then on, the history of the St. Pierre River is closely linked to that of the Lachine Canal. What used to be an asset became a nuisance in the 19th century with the frequent floods and the increasingly unhealthy aspects  of the river; domestic, farming and industrial waste all found their way into the river. In 1821, work on the Lachine Canal got underway in earnest. A first collector, the William collector, a section of which can be seen at the Pointe-à-Callière Museum, was built in 1832. A feat of Victorian engineering, this masonry conduit encased the river below ground at its eastern end. More work followed in 1897, in 1914-1915 and in 1932 – with the building of the Great St. Pierre collector, this time a concrete work further burying the river – and later in the 1960s.

Economic development and the sanitation movement, which especially targeted stagnant waters and marshes as sources of epidemics, finally won the day and the river, like many others in Montreal,  all but disappeared from view. Today, only 200 meters of this once important river remains to be seen on Meadowbrook.

For more info on Montreal’s sewer system, please consult https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89gouts_de_Montr%C3%A9al

You might also enjoy http://undermontreal.com/map/

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Les Amis Asks Quebec Environment Minister for Help

11/03/2019 by Janice

Les Amis du parc Meadowbrook has written Quebec Environment Minister Benoit Charette, asking him to intercede in a plan that would harm one of the the few remaining open sections of the historic Saint-Pierre River, which runs through the Meadowbrook property.

This small waterway has been found to be contaminated by sewage coming from the Toe Blake Connector. Tests revealed the ultimate source of the pollution comes from cross-connections in underground pipes in Cote St Luc and Montreal West. The City of Montreal has known about this situation since 2002. It did a study of the collector in 2014, but the problem continues.

A Quebec Superior Court judge has given the City of Montreal until the end of 2019 to stop the pollution of the Saint-Pierre. As a result, the city decided to temporarily divert the collector until the crossed connections have all been fixed.

Les Amis expressed grave concerns about this proposal. While it would reduce the pollution, this would harm the plants growing along the river’s banks during dry spells. It would also affect the entire hydrographic system in the area, since the river drains the spring runoff that accumulates nearby, attracting migrating waterfowl to the area.

Les Amis asked the minister whether he could ask for impact studies on the effects of the planned deviation, and whether he could also force the three municipalities concerned to find a less environmentally damaging solution.

Five other environmental organizations also signed the letter while the CRE-Montreal will send its own letter to the minister on the subject.

The text of the letter is included below, in French only.

 

Le 6 mars 2019.

M. Benoit Charette

Ministre de l’Environnement et de la Lutte contre les changements climatiques

Objet : Demande de certificat d’autorisation pour la déviation du collecteur Toe Blake à Montréal

 

M. le ministre,

Je suis directrice du groupe environnemental Les Amis du parc Meadowbrook.

Depuis trente ans, notre groupe défend du développement immobilier un terrain de golf de 57 hectares qui se trouve à cheval sur l’arrondissement de Lachine et la ville de Côte-Saint-Luc dans le sud-ouest de Montréal. Le terrain n’est pas propice au développement, étant entouré – et traversé – par des rails de chemin de fer. Notre objectif est d’en faire un parc nature accessible à tous. Nous avons d’ailleurs obtenu la désignation Grand espace vert ou récréatif pour le terrain en 2015 dans le Plan métropolitain d’aménagement durable (PMAD).

Nous sommes préoccupés du sort de la rivière qui traverse ce terrain, un des rares endroits à Montréal où l’on peut encore voir l’historique rivière Saint-Pierre qui coulait autrefois du flanc de la Montagne jusqu’à Verdun et qui a été ensuite raccordée à la petite rivière Saint-Pierre qui, elle, se jette dans le Saint-Laurent à la Pointe-à-Callières, le berceau de la ville de Montréal.

Nous ne voulons en aucun cas que cette rivière soit enfouie ou canalisée : nous aimerions plutôt la voir réhabiliter. Nous avions d’ailleurs applaudi la décision de la Cour supérieure de juin 2018 (dossier 500-17-079150-135, ci-joint) qui forçait la ville de Montréal à cesser de polluer la rivière, mais les choses ne sont jamais si simples.

La Ville de Montréal sait depuis au moins 2002 que le ruisseau est contaminé grâce aux études du Réseau de suivi des milieux aquatiques (RSMA). La pollution provient en fait du collecteur Toe Blake qui va de la Ville de Mont-Royal, traverse les villes de Côte-Saint-Luc, Montréal et Montréal-Ouest pour se déverser sur le golf Meadowbrook à la hauteur du parc Toe Blake dans Montréal-Ouest. Le collecteur est contaminé par des raccordements croisés situés dans les villes de Côte-Saint-Luc et Montréal-Ouest. La Ville de Montréal avait d’ailleurs entrepris en 2014 une analyse très rigoureuse du collecteur, regard par regard (160 prélèvements en tout) et avait repéré 167 raccordements fautifs à Côte-Saint-Luc et 51 à Montréal-Ouest (copie du rapport est ci-joint).

Nous avons travaillé avec la Société pour vaincre la pollution (SVP) qui, à partir de ce rapport, a repéré les secteurs où se trouveraient les raccordements inversés de même que les adresses des propriétés touchées. Nous avons remis ces adresses aux trois municipalités concernées.

Nous avons plaidé auprès des villes de Montréal, Côte-Saint-Luc et Montréal -Ouest, de même qu’à l’Agglomération, mais n’avons obtenu que des réponses partielles. Après des tests de fumée, la ville de Côte-Saint-Luc n’aurait rien trouvé (!) tandis qu’après des tests de rhodamine, la ville de Montréal-Ouest aurait réglé neuf cas de raccordement croisé et réorienterait ses efforts de réfection des rues à l’avenir vers les rues où se trouverait le plus grand nombre de raccordements problématiques. Ne pourrait-on pas à tout le moins reprendre l’échantillonnage de l’étude du collecteur Toe Blake dans les secteurs les plus polluants afin de savoir une fois pour toutes ce qu’il en retourne ?

Pour faire vite –la Cour supérieure a donné à la Ville de Montréal jusqu’à  la fin de 2019 pour stopper la pollution –Montréal a décidé de détourner le collecteur Toe Blake en amont de la rivière, de manière temporaire à ce que l’on nous dit, jusqu’à ce que les raccordements croisés soient corrigés.

Le fait de détourner ainsi le collecteur par temps sec nous préoccupe à plusieurs titres. Il réduit à n’en pas douter la pollution du cours d’eau, mais entrainerait cependant l’assèchement de la rivière pendant ces périodes, privée qu’elle serait de son alimentation.   Une telle mesure causerait des dommages importants à la flore riveraine qui s’est implantée depuis que le propriétaire a cessé de tondre la pelouse jusqu’au bord de l’eau. Il y a plus cependant : c’est tout le système hydrographique qui serait affecté, puisque la rivière draine le terrain qui inonde au printemps, à la grande joie des oiseaux migrateurs qui en ont fait un arrêt dans leur périple annuel. Avouez qu’un tel spectacle n’est pas banal en pleine ville de Montréal. En vertu de l’article 31.34 de la Loi sur la qualité de l’environnement (LQE), ne pourrait-on pas demander des études sur l’impact d’une telle déviation? Le ministère ne pourrait-il pas aussi en vertu de l’article 31.33 de cette même loi forcer les trois municipalités concernées à se concerter pour trouver une solution moins dommageable?

De nombreux autres groupes environnementaux et communautaires appuient notre démarche comme vous pouvez le constater aux signatures qui accompagnent cette lettre. Nous voulons tous sauver la rivière, la tendance voulant que les villes rouvrent les cours d’eau enfouis par le passé afin d’alléger les problèmes de surverse et la facture de traitement des eaux (voir notre article http://lesamisdemeadowbrook.org/uncategorized-fr/daylighting-les-rivieres/?lang=fr)

Nous vous remercions de prendre en considération nos inquiétudes et nous en remettons à votre bon jugement pour empêcher la perte de l’un des derniers tronçons encore visibles de la rivière Saint-Pierre.

Veuillez agréer, monsieur le ministre, nos sentiments les plus distingués

 

Louise Legault, directrice, Les Amis du parc Meadowbrook

 

Daniel Green, président, Société pour vaincre la pollution

Georges Hébert, STOP

Lisa Mintz, présidente, Les amis du parc Angrignon  et Sauvons la Falaise

Gareth Richardson, président, Coalition Verte

Jonathan Théorêt, directeur, Groupe de recherche appliquée en macroécologie (GRAME)

cc Madame Valérie Plante, maire de Montréal

  1. Luc Ferrandez, responsable des Grands parcs, des Espaces verts et des Grands projets, Ville de Montréal

Maire Mitchell Brownstein, Côte-Saint-Luc

Maire Benny Masella, Montréal-Ouest

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The St. Pierre River: Montreal’s Lost River

12/08/2018 by Janice

by Sally Cole

This article was originally published in 2018.  It has been extensively revised, and republished 12/03/2021.

The history of the St. Pierre River is deeply intertwined with the history of Montreal.  The story of the river tells the story of the development of the city itself.  Yet most Montrealers are unaware of its existence.

Long ago rerouted and buried in the city’s sewers and canals, the St. Pierre River is today largely invisible. It is a lost river.

The St. Pierre river in better days

Many cities in the world today are reclaiming and renaturalizing their lost rivers as historic sites, tourist attractions, recreational public parks and biodiverse habitats for plants and animals.  The most visible stretch of the St. Pierre River system remaining above ground today is 200 metres long and nestled in the 57-hectare green space of an ageing golf course in Montreal’s west end. Yet even this vestige of the river may soon be allowed to dry up and disappear.

For millennia, the rich river habitat and wetlands of the Island of Montreal supported the hunting, fishing, foraging and farming activities of Indigenous peoples. When Samuel de Champlain first saw the Island in 1611, he reported that the rivers and streams teemed with fish. Game birds nested. Strawberries, fruit trees and nuts thrived. Montreal Island’s network of rivers and streams gave access to, and shelter from, the strong waters of the St. Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers. Nearby meadows offered fertile soil to farm and provide food for the settlement that de Maisonneuve founded 30 years later as Ville Marie. European settlement grew as the site became a hub in the North American fur trade and a port for lumber export to Europe.

The St. Pierre River is one of more than 30 rivers and streams that once traversed the Island of Montreal.  Originating in streams on Mount Royal, the St. Pierre River flowed via several tributaries through Côte Saint-Luc, Ville Saint-Pierre, Saint-Henri and Verdun. It flowed over the Notre Dame de Grâce Escarpment (now the Falaise St. Jacques), draining the higher ground and widening into a lake below that was called Lac Saint-Pierre or Otter Lake, now the site of the Turcot interchange. The river finally flowed into the St. Lawrence River, across from Nun’s Island.

Diverted Early

In the late 17th century (ca. 1697), the Sulpicians, who in 1657 had been granted the Ville Marie seigneury, built the Saint-Gabriel canal to divert water from the St. Pierre River and increase the flow of water powering their flour mills. The waters of Otter Lake gradually drained. In the 1820s, the St. Pierre River was tunneled under the new Lachine Canal to control erosion.

Eventually, the canalized St. Pierre River joined other streams, including the ruisseau Prud’homme draining NDG and the ruisseau Saint-Martin which drained the Plateau, combining to form the Petite Rivière flowing on the edge of Griffintown, through Place d’Youville and out into the St. Lawrence at Pointe à Callière.  In 1832-38, the St. Pierre-Petite Rivière system was incorporated into the city’s first stone sewer, the William Collector, which can be visited today at the Point à Callière museum.

Throughout the 19th century, the industrializing city straightened, dredged and diverted the St. Pierre-Petite Rivière system as it built the city waterworks, supplied steam engines to drive industry, and developed the urban sewer system. By the mid-19th century, when the first railway yards were built, Otter Lake was little more than a marsh (that nonetheless managed to swallow two locomotives). By the early 20th century, more than one third of the river had disappeared into sewers.

In the 1950s, sewer construction for new housing in the suburb of Côte Saint-Luc covered open sections of the Little St. Pierre tributary, and the Côte Saint-Luc shopping centre was built on a wetland of the original St. Pierre river drainage system. The 200 metres of the old St. Pierre River system that survive today remain because this tributary, the Little St. Pierre, was a key feature of the 57-hectare recreational area that the Canadian Pacific Railway created for its workers after World War I and that, in the mid-20th century, became the Meadowbrook golf course.

In 2006, real estate developer Groupe Pacific bought the golf course for a housing development they called “The Petite Rivière Project.” The company submitted a proposal to the City of Montreal to develop the Lachine side of the site. The plan was to build more than 1600 residential units, keeping the 31 hectares located in Côte Saint-Luc as a nine-hole golf course. The proposal listed five actions as key to create the new Petite Rivière neighbourhood, and action #1 was to “Bring the distressed Petite Rivière stream back to life as a healthy, restored river.” The city eventually rejected the housing development proposal.

Pollution Problems

The river is polluted because of crossed connections between household sewage pipes and storm sewers in Côte Saint-Luc and Montreal West. In its original proposal, the developer stated that Groupe Pacific itself would purify the river through a system of reed beds and shallow ponds to manage rainwater and snow melt and bring back the biodiversity of the river’s habitat for amphibians, birds and small mammals. The regenerated river and wetlands were to become the centrepiece of a park for the new residential community. As a tribute to the vibrant agricultural heritage of the banks of the Little St. Pierre River tributary, the developer also proposed to preserve one of the original farm hedges that still remain on Meadowbrook.

The St. Pierre river in 2020

However, as time passed, Groupe Pacific began referring to the Little St. Pierre River as a smelly “ditch” and sued the City of Montreal, demanding that the “open sewer” be buried.  In June 2018, a Quebec Superior Court Judge ordered the City to stop polluting the river and to clean up the riverbanks.  A month later, both the City of Montreal and Groupe Pacific launched appeals.  The city asked for time to correct the crossed sewer connections in Montreal West and Côte Saint-Luc, citing Quebec’s Environmental Quality Act that calls for integrated water management to prevent the loss of wetlands and bodies of water. The city argued that rehabilitation of the river is part of a larger plan for rainwater management and the maintenance of its green corridors.

Meanwhile, Groupe Pacific also appealed the Superior Court ruling, asking that the judgment be modified to order the city to cut off any flow of water to the property—whether contaminated or not—and not be subject to provincial environmental regulations. In January 2021, the Quebec Court of Appeal ordered the City of Montreal to stop all discharge into the river.

We are now a long way away from Groupe Pacific’s proposal to make the Little St. Pierre River the centerpiece of its real estate development!

Public Debate

Only a few small sections of this historic river system are still visible on Meadowbrook, in Angrignon Park and near the Lachine Canal. Clearly, however, the St. Pierre River continues to play a defining role in public debate about the future of Montreal and the kind of city we want to live in.

Beyond its significance to Montreal’s historical patrimony, the St. Pierre River and its wetlands also play important environmental roles in maintaining biodiversity, preserving century-old trees, offering sanctuary to migrating birds and assisting in the management of rainfall, snow melt and flood control.  For many of us, flooded basements after summer rainstorms are a common occurrence—potent reminders that our neighbourhoods were built on wetlands and over buried streambeds.

Many of the world’s great cities, including Seoul, Paris, New York, London and Toronto, are working to bring back—to “daylight”—their original rivers, streams and wetlands. As climate warming increases the frequency and scale of flood events, these cities recognize that it is crucial to use their underground rivers and wetlands as an economical, clean and natural means to manage increasing drainage problems.  These cities also know that clean streams, rivers and wetlands within their cities add measurable value to real estate and immeasurable aesthetic pleasure, educational opportunities and health and well-being to residents.

 

Let’s Clean and “Daylight” the St. Pierre River

Let’s NOT allow it to dry up or be buried

Let’s Keep the Brook in MeadowBROOK!

Links

The film Lost Rivers by Montreal director Caroline Bacle explores the phenomenon of daylighting: http://undermontreal.com/lost-rivers-documentary

Gazette journalist Marion Scott also covered the River extensively in 2009 https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/from-the-archives-our-islands-lost-rivers

See also “At the mouth of Riviere St. Pierre during the early stages of Montreal in1700” and “Approximate path of river, circa 1800” in http://undermontreal.com/riviere-st-pierre-part-i-start-to-finish/

photos by Nigel Dove and Andy Dodge

 

 

 

 

 

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