Here is about the best shot of Turcot Yards and it’s surroundings you are ever likely to see. It is taken from this page by the City Of Montreal that takes a look at it’s 10 Ecoterritories.
The length of Turcot is somewhat compressed here. For anyone who is interested it takes about 40 minutes to walk from the Turcot Interchange in the backgrouind to the Angrignon Overpass in the foreground, providing you don’t stop to check anything out.
From this page the City says in relation to it’s green policies, “Montréal, a city which has lost 75 hectares of wood each year over the past decade, became the first municipality in Québec to adopt a policy to protect and enhance natural habitats in December 2004.”Seems like a damage control statement to me as the city’s record on allowing development into “protected” areas is a joke. In fact, aerial photography of the island in 1988 showed that depletion of “green cover” was already past the “boiling” point. Despite some glossy rhetoric and the creation of the Ecoterritories- all of which have been severely encroached upon by development in recent decades- the current admistration appears to be as insensitive to the reality of the need for the redevelopement of the island as a healthy, sustainable, environment as were administrations past.
I look at the picture above and it is not too hard to imagine how it once may have been with the Riviere Saint Pierre running the length of Turcot and Otter Lake where the Interchange now is. I see how the Falaise Saint Jacques (the green strip that runs the north side of Turcot Yards) can connect with the Lachine Canal (A bike/pedestrain crossing over highway 20) and the neighborhoods of NDG ( the road already exists!) on the left, not to mention Saint Henri which lays beyond the Interchange. There is a tremendous opportunity for Montreal to join the rest of the world by going “Sustainable” at Turcot Yards.
This year Walking Turcot Yards is going to place more emphasis on the Falaise Saint Jacques and look at ideas, people, and creative solutions for Turcot Yards.
We need more projects like this one to recover the true beauty of Mother Nature combined with that that man himself can create.
ok so that explains the cryptic Otter Lake sign…sorta
Otter Lake may have spread out to the west end of Turcot. It’s pretty much accepted that the Lachine Canal was built through swamps and creeks which the aboriginal people may have used to bypass the rapids. Tell me more about the cryptic sign.
Neath
Interesting view — It sure doesn’t look from that image like it takes 40 minutes to walk between the two points. Looking forward to coming year of observations and photos!
I know, but when you stand under one the other can be seen on the horizon on a clear day.
you know how there’s like a second level to Turcot? theres high grass and there’s a little staircase and just this little sign that says “Otter Lake” but there’s no lake…obviously. I found it weird because there’s an Otter Lake near my parents where I grew up in the Gatineau Valley.
I know the sign you mean, Kathleen. Turcot was also what they call a “hump” yard, so it s possible that that section was actually raised so that train cars could then just roll down to the sidings they wanted to move them to. But the high grass stuff is very cool, makes me like to think that maybe the lake is gradually reclaiming it’s own land.
I have spent a while looking at the aerial photo. I feel I know the place; but for me it is also strange. I grew up a handful of pixels just off the lower left corner of the image. And in 1968 I left Montreal to join the staff of the new planetarium in Toronto — so I remember those structures as just-built. For me, the construction in Turcot Yards was part of the excitement and preparation for Expo 67. The ramps were new and cars would float quickly through the air past places that had been pokey neighbourhoods. Part of the strangeness of the new expressways was the streetlamps embedded in the guardrails. Actually I don’t think that was a great idea. At night it turned the cars into silhouettes, and it must have made snow removal from the lighted panels difficult.
So here you show the yards as an abandoned place, and there are plans to scrap the road system. BTW, do you know exactly where the old roundhouse was located? As a child, looking down at that wonderful place from somewhere up on the cliff was part of every trip into town. The last time I was in Montreal, I was delighted to see that the tower on the Lachine Canal that was part of the coke plant was still there. My sister and I could sit for hours watching it in operation.
Great story, Robert! Any more about the roundhouse days? What was it like before the Turcot Interchange?
Neath
Sure. Remember, my view was from the Montreal West end.
That is Brock Avenue South in the lower left of the picture. There was a time when you could walk down Brock and across highway 20 to a little community. There was a U-shaped street there with trees and 2-story wood-framed houses.
All of that had to go in preparation for developing that space; so eventually all of those houses were empty and needed to be demolished.
At that time the fire department was experimenting with extinguishing fires using a fogging technique instead of simply blasting a strong stream of water into the structure. So, one by one, they burned those houses to the ground.
Our whole neighbourhood gathered for the event. It was amazing to watch a building be deliberately torched and allowed to burn. They would conduct the experiments — but in the end the object was to bring the structure down. Sometimes the last act was knocking down the masonry chimney with a jet from the fire hose. I remember the affair as exciting, even educational, but not really a happy event.
Sometime after that an office building appeared in that space. I don’t remember much about this, so it could have been after I left. The odd thing about that building was that there must have been a huge geotechnical error made in the planning. The building sank and tilted – a little like the Tower of Pisa. The building was condemned and was vacant for a long time. Eventually it was demolished.
More later…
Fascinating, I sure wish there was more documentation of those times available. I bet there might be something in the archives of the fire department and Transport Quebec, or whoever was behind the projects in those days.
It was must have been something to see the Lasalle Coke Crane in operation.
I know I have probably seen them but I just can’t recall ships in the canal.
Until I read your blog I never knew that there was a name for the steep slope that seems to define the north verge of Turcot Yards: “Falaise Saint Jacques.” Nevertheless, it is a prominent geological feature, and I’ve often wondered how it was formed. I think the word falaise refers to a cliff, but I suspect that it is more of an escarpment. In the photo it is a fairly straight line that extends all the way from downtown Montreal.
That hill seems to wrap around the western border between Montreal West and Ville St-Pierre. I lived a couple of houses from the crest of that hill. My bedroom window gave me a view over highway 20, the Lachine Canal, to the Mercier Bridge and distant hills in the USA.
In the 60s I remember an amazing event. There was a huge fire at the La Salle Monsanto plant. We had a view of it looking over the Turcot Yards from atop Falaise Saint Jacques. There must have been many drums or tanks of flammable chemicals, because the most dramatic events were sudden large balls of roiling fire and black smoke thundering skyward. Many seconds later we would hear a muffled boom.
Although I don’t remember the date, I’ve just found a reference to October 13, 1966, “Monsanto chemical plant fire kills 11, La Salle (PQ).”
I remember hearing about that. There was also 2 large “gasometer” type tanks in the Angrignon Park/Newman blvd area that were taken down in the late 60′s. I grew up in Verdun which was great for access to the river but no cool views (except for Nun’s Island before the development)like you had over there.
The La Salle Coke crane was only one of the wonders of the Lachine Canal. I could not actually see the water of the canal from my window; but if I looked above the roof of that long factory that was on the south side of Highway 20 (BTW, I think that was Highway 2 &17 in those days, but I’m not sure) I could see the ships gliding along. I didn’t need to look to know that there was a boat there — they had to blow their horns to have the operator raise the bridge to the south of Ville St-Pierre. At night I’d watch the ships’ lights move steadily across my viewscape. Once and a while a military vessel would pass. We’d know because instead of a horn we would hear a loud ‘woop-woop.’ If the ship was not visible we figured it was a submarine.
I thought that the lift bridge itself was a grand gadget. It had one of those decks that pivoted up with a huge cement counterweight on the north side.
Working locks on the canal are magnificent water machines of mystery and power.
This thread has me thinking about Montreal West in the 40s, 50s and 60s. To the west of our house was a 15 acre farm owned by the Decarie sisters. They lived in a huge Victorian house surrounded by a couple of barns and a smaller house for the hired hand. One of the barns served as real icehouse. As a kid I can remember in the heat of summer digging down in the wet sawdust to find the blocks of ice.
The farm took up the flat space to the south of Blue Bonnets Hill (the hill that led from Montreal West to Ville St-Pierre), and flowed down the now gentle slopes of Falaise Saint Jacques to the railroad tracks. In the winter, that part of the Falaise was excellent for tobogganing.
My Dad told me that at one time the farm was known for growing the Montreal Melon. When I asked what that was he said that it was like a cantaloupe, and was similar to the Oka Melon.
I just did a search to see if anyone else ever heard of the Montreal Melon, and was surprised to find this URL: http://www.montrealmelon.com/
The web site is authored by Debra Aubin. I remember our family buying outstanding sweet corn from Aubin’s farm, but I cannot remember where it was.
No reason there can’t be tobagganing there again:P !
There won’t be any more tobogganing down that hill on the Decarie Farm. The property was subdivided in the late 50s.
However, I did look at the Falaise St-Jacques with Google Earth. It is an amazingly long contiguous strip of green space in an urban setting. I was wondering about the ecological values of that hill. Does it contain any interesting wildlife, migrating birds, or species of plants? It looks as if it has been ignored all of these years. Rue St-Jacques is somewhat removed from the crest, and the hill itself seems to be along the back of the properties on the south side of the road. Does the City own the hill itself? As the Turcot Yards are developed, should the Falaise have some park status? Is there any community of people who care about it?
I see that Rue St-Jacques is now called Avon Road through Montreal West. I recall that as the “Upper Lachine Road.” Earlier I mentioned that the section of that road that is cut into the Falaise and leads down to Ville St-Pierre was once called Blue Bonnets Hill. I believe it refers to caps of soldiers marching down that hill, but I cannot tell you their destination war.
One of the reasons that I was looking at Google Earth was to see if I could figure out the site of the roundhouse. I recall that the road (was it called Rue St-Jacques then?) descended the Falaise just below the Westmount train yards. I suspect that was the only place that I would have been able to look out of the car window and see the roundhouse below.
BTW, I think I remember my father calling that hill: Tannery Hill. There must have been a tannery somewhere thereabouts, but I didn’t know about it.
[...] island with a deep-sea port that serves a different ocean. The thread with my comments is here Overview of Turcot Yards in Montreal. When I was young, the Turcot yards were about trains. As British Columbia builds grand [...]
The Roundhouse was located about where the middle of the Interchange is today, perhaps a little over closer to the Falaise. “”Les Tanneries” refers to the west end of Saint Henri and the local buisnesses that were run in the area in the late 19th century. Not sure when that tapered out.
Check out this post, http://neath.wordpress.com/2006/12/23/saint-henri-west/
I bought a wonderful book a few years ago called Magnetic North, all about the age of steam (and later) in Canada. There are many gorgeous photos of the Montreal area yards and stations, including the roundhouses.
Now I simply MUST find that Otter Lake sign.
Bob
Where is the staircase and sign? I’d love to see it.
It’s in the west end of the yards amongst a long row of “reed” type growth.
Maybe just beyond the now blocked gate at Pullman? I’m scanning navurb, trying to locate it. there is a path from behind the old Rose Bowl, down into the yards, which is quite clear on navurb and Google maps, but that’s not all way to the west.
You probably won’t see it from above.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24413747@N00/140054400/
And I take it it’s right against the escarpment? I need more to go on! I want to see this thing.
not on the escarpment. If you notice a strong line of growth in the northwest end, it is on the south side of that growth, the stairs take you from one side of the growth to the other.
Hmmm, it’s funny. I was driving on the 20E and looked across to the yards, and just about when I was even with the little bike path parking lot on Notre Dame, I caught a glimpse of a little staircase cutting through the long line of reeds.
I’d gone out there on my bike last weekend, and found another line of growth, but way out in the furthest West end of the yards, west even of the Angrignon overpass. Almost as soon as you turn onto Pullman from St. Jacques at the Raphael Motel, you can cut across the filed to a little hill down to the tracks. Those reeds grow in a long line there too, and go about 200m to where the yards really end at the 20 in the west. I found zip, except for some nice rusty spikes for my garden.
But when I saw the stairs over in the main part of the yards, well, I mean how many little wooden staircases can there be?
I will check it out next week some time.
Bob
[...] Blog Action Day and the theme is the environment. So today we will urge our readers to think of the Falaise Saint Jacques, that sturdy little escarpment that runs the northern border of Turcot Yards. Transport Quebec has [...]
[...] Western end of the Falaise Saint Jacques. That tip was cleared out some years ago, but wasn’t developed save for some advertising. That is no way to treat an Ecoterritory! [...]
The Turcot roundhouse used to be directly below the CPR Glen/Westmount yards and was accessed by a path down the escarpment just East of where old Decarie is.
To access Turcot by road, you turned South on St Remi, then West on Pullman I think it was, to get to the rear of the roundhouse.
Fascinating place to be when steam locomotives were still in use.
We used to sit at the South end of Decarie and watch them service the engines.
As the engine arrived from a run, it dropped it’s fire into a water-filled pit between the rails where the fire was quenched, in a cloud of steam. A large overhead travelling crane with a clamshell bucket then moved the wet ashes to waiting gondolas for use as fill along the line.
The engine without a fire then moved East on it’s own steam into a wooden-walled Blow Down Pen where most of the hot water from the boiler was drained out.
This made a thunderous ROAR and a huge cloud of steam.
Minerals and treatment from the water collected so the rails were buried right up to their heads, looking like streetcar track.
The engine was then moved onto the turntable and into the roundhouse for maintenance, the rest of the water being drained inside.
There were other outbound engines getting coal and water.
The coal chute was to the West of the roundhouse was, in all, about 1/4 mile long, with a long-sloped trestle up which coal hoppers were shoved by a Yard Engine into the covered tower from the West end.
The coal was dumped into bins beneath the track in the tower, and engines on paralled tracks below took coal into their tenders from chutes on the bottom of each side of the tower.
In 1961 we spent the summer watching them scrap over 110 steam locomotives at Turcot. Sad, and never able to be forgotten.
We used to take the 106 Upper Lachine bus along U L road and go down the STEEP road at the East side of Rose Bowl lanes to get into the Yards.
It was a thrill going down on a bike!
In winter the City of Montreal used to go down the same road with trucks of snow to dump once the tracks were lifted in 1960s.
The City Yard was almost right across the street.
LaSalle Coke used to quench coke, and each time a huge cloud of steam would rise for almost a mile in the air, especially in winter.
Until 1956 or so, all the gas used in the city was provided by LaSalle Coke and stored in the rising tanks once so prominent.
The Natural Gas arrived by pipeline from the West in 1957?, spelling the doom, ultimately, of LaSalle Coke.
The crane still extant by the canal was emptied by small narrow-gauge coal cars on a cable which cirulated into the plant proper South of St. Patrick St. at CPR Power Jct.
When a canaller was being unloaded they wrapped the wheelhouse and aft quarters on the boat with canvas as coal would blow from the clamshell bucket and also rain down on your car if you stopped to watch the unloading.
If you had binoculars, you could watch the coal cars circulating from the foot of Decarie.
CNR changed from steam to electric or vice vera on passenger trains at Turcot East on Central Station Trains.
Montreal Tramways used to run along the South side of Turcot Yard thru to Lachine.
After the Lachine streetcar line came off there was an exclusive autobus-only road along the North side of the Lachine Canal from Cote St. Paul to 6th in Ville St. Pierre.
There was a gatehouse about midway to stop unauthorized use of the bus road.
I too remember the explosion at Monsanto, sounded like a cat jumping off the bed in the next room.
A year or two earlier there was an apartment block in La Salle ( on Rue Bergevin??? ) that exploded from Natural Gas, killing several people. We could see the smoke out our kitchen window.
Around 1962 a private house blew up on Beaconsfield Ave. just North of Sherbrooke.
One day we were coming in from Dorval on the 2-17 and could see the houses on fire at Brock South of the highway, just across from the Raphael Ruffo Motel, and immediately rode our bikes down.
Going down Brock was a thrill on a bike, too!
We rode around the still-smoldering ruins on lower Brock and on the next dead end street to the West, expecting to get yelled at by a cop or fireman at any time.
There was no one around! but, we expected trouble, and did not trespass.
In the above photo of Turcot West the lower end of Brock would be where the 4 tracks enter the underpass from the East at the very bottom of the photo.
Right at the bottom of Brock was CNR Turcot West where departing trains received their Train Orders and there was a small station and Semaphore signals.
There used to be a single-track level crossing at this location of the CNR crossing 2-17 which went by Consumers Glass in VSP, then around West of CPR Sortin Yard and thru to Vertu and thence to Jacques Cartier Jct. just South of Bordeaux Jail.
Old CNR at that time still passed thru Lachine to Dorval along with Tramways out to Dixie.
Montreal Tramways paralleled the CNR thru to 6th Ave in Lachine by Dominion Bridge, ( the tracks can still be seen under the pavement on William MacDonald East of 6th ) then the MTC went South on 6th to Notre Dame then West to 34th, North to Broadway, West on Broadway to 45th, then North to the CNR and once again parallel out to Dixie on the border with Dorval.
Rue Victoria is basically situated on the old CNR line from Turcot to Dorval.
At 6th ave in Lachine, CNR once had a station named Dominion.
CNR Lachine station was then at 34th and Broadway.
Thank You.
Thanks, cdnlococo!! There is a wild wealth of information in that story.
[...] An Ecoterritory [...]
I lived right next to the Montreal West train station, and had the opportunity to enjoy the hissing and spitting of the huge majestic Steam Engines, ‘way back in the 50′s. The thunder of the engines as they “chugged” out of the station was so thundrous and powerful. Next stop was Westmount. In the middle you passed Elmhurst Avenue (at the bottom of which was Elmhurst Dairy with the best ice cream cones in the world for $.10 – later Sealtest – with the two cow-heads on the billboard next to the main entrance on Upper Lachine Road (later Avon Road) – then you passed through NDG (Notre Dame de Grace) and then Marcil Avenue, Girouard Avenue and finally Decarie Boulevard (at the bottom of which was the Rose Bowl Lanes, the A&W Drive-In, and NITTOLO’s Restaurant, Motel, Lounge and Gardens – then on to Westmount Station – near the Glen – where POM (Pride of Montreal) Bakery was situated and also Readers Digest Offices on Redfern Avenue – and then onwards to downtown. …………. and it was only $.10
Val Frost and Bubbles, my Newfoundland Service Dog
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