Saturday 5 September 2009

Saturday Photo: Outremont Brook from Mountain to Park

Here is a suite of photos I took earlier this summer which show the progress of a stream once called Outremont Brook back when part of this garden neighborhood had a sizeable Anglophone component. Like many other streams, it begins on Mount Royal and flows down to eventually reach the St. Lawrence.

The first place it surfaces now is near the entrance to Mount Royal Cemetery ( top photo.) It's channeled underground for a quarter of kilometer after that, and then comes up in the backyard of a very fancy house a little way down the mountain.

After that it flows through tiny Roskilde Park (second photo) and between two houses before entering the property of the Soeurs missionnaires de l'Immaculée-Conception. There it runs through a channel (third photo) and ducks under Côte Ste Catherine road and a series of houses built in the early part of the 20th century. It doesn't really come to the surface again, but the spot where it once spread out to form a marshy pond is now Parc St. Viateur (fourth photo.) Old maps show it running north to meet a stream which ran eastward before cutting south and then east to enter the St. Lawrence at Pointe à Callières. You wouldn't know that now.


4 comments:

deBeauxOs said...

A couple of years ago I met someone who worked at The Gazette building in the printing press area in the basement. He claimed that it was built right next to the underground pipes that diverted a number of streams running down the east side of Mont Royal. Sometimes, he said, the roar of the water competed with the cacophony of the printing machines.

lagatta à montréal said...

Up here, the water feature in parc Jarry was also a marshy pond, part of the stream running across the former farm that became the park. One of the prettier areas of our rather bald park (before the Dutch Elm disease, it was covered with tall trees). Of course much of the park is playing fields for various sports and games, tennis courts and swimming and wading pools, but it could still use many more trees around and between these.

Spacing Montréal explored other underground streams; I believe some of these would be among those passing near the Gazette building.

In your exploration of Paris, I'm sure you've discovered La Bièvre, the river polluted by the textile industry and covered over. I have friends who live right by it...flowing under their feet.

Mary Soderstrom said...

Great story about the Gazette!

Actually the last time we were in Paris I found a lovely book about the Bièvre and its history. Did you know that the Glacières (13e arrondissment) gets its name from the ice which was cutfrom the Bièvre in winter and then stored in the caverns made in an old gympsum quarry? There also is a website put up by people who are trying to reclaim part of it. http://www.bievre.org/

Mary Soderstrom said...
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