Metropolitan Natures: Environmental Histories of Montreal

6. At the Source of a New Urbanity: Water Networks and Power Relations in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century

101 At the Source of a New Urbanity Water Networks and Power Relations in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century Michèle Dagenais 6 According to journalist Guillaume-Alphonse Nantel, in his treatise on urban planning published at the beginning of the twentieth century, floods of water constituted one of Montreal’s great riches: Montreal is in the very midst of an abundance of water. It has, so to speak, only to open its mouth to quench its thirst and to unfurl its watering hoses, to give free play to its hydrants to cleanse itself, to combat the ferments of disease that spill from its innumerable chimneys and emanate from manure diluted by the parsimonious municipal sprinkler. It has only to wish it to wash its streets, squares and gardens with surging streams of running water. Floods of running water! This is the second condition for life, public health, beauty, freshness, attraction.1 Nantel’s barely exaggerated metaphor evoked the millions of cubic feet of water drawn from the St. Lawrence River and then channeled and distributed by means of recently built infrastructure. The journalist thus underscored the degree to which water had become central to how the urban environment was conceived and organized in his day. But which water, and in what form? Nantel was referring to “running water,” inspired by the sanitary ideal in vogue at the time. Fresh water, in this case the water from the St. Lawrence River, 102 - Michèle Dagenais was transformed into “running water” that circulated through the urban space via pipes and conduits. Thus modified and distributed, running water became the quintessential means of permanently cleansing the city, relieving the urban problems of the day, and improving the quality of everyday life. Essentially considered an obstacle just a few years before, as Dany Fougères reports in the previous chapter, water soon became crucial to the new paradigm of using water to improve the urban environment. In fact, the process of that change resulted from a two-pronged transformation: transformation on the political level by the municipalization of Montreal’s territory and transformation on the environmental and technical level by the transportation of fresh water and its commodification.2 These two changes took place simultaneously and fed into one another. In fact, Montreal’s political territory came into being with the building of the drinking and wastewater systems and the creation of a regulatory framework governing their use. In turn, new uses for water arising from its broad distribution helped solidify and consolidate the developing municipal space. Therefore, by looking at both the political history and the urban environmental history, this chapter examines how the commodification of a natural element, water, contributed to Montreal’s urban development process and the molding of political relationships on the municipal level from the middle of the nineteenth century onward. A New Mode of Government In December 1842, readers of daily newspaper La Minerve learned that Montreal was populated by nearly 41,000 people, 1,202 horses, 1,179 horned animals, 35 sheep, and 725 pigs.3 This human population figure was almost five times more than at the turn of the nineteenth century, and the number of horses was larger by a factor of ten.4 These statistics provided fodder for discussions about health issues that had been cropping up from all sides for decades. Thus, Dr. Pierre Beaubien, newly elected to the city council, launched this impassioned appeal to his colleagues: “The city’s sanitation and the health of its inhabitants, its population and its growth, its location, its embellishment, its commerce, the preservation of our properties, the city’s future . . . require immediate internal improvements. Wide new streets must be opened up . . . , public squares created, trees planted . . . ; certain sewers must be covered, and swamps and muddy areas that surround almost our entire city must be drained.”5 Armed with the powers conferred by the new municipal charter adopted in 1840, Dr. Beaubien proved anxious “to make improvements to our city in a At the Source of a New Urbanity - 103 broadminded, enlightened spirit.” For him, urban sanitation and economic prosperity went hand in hand. Moreover, his plea attested to the importance, if nottheurgency,ofcreatingtheconditionsrequiredtomakeMontrealaflourishing city. He thus echoed the words of Jacques Viger, Newton Bosworth, and other observers who, since the beginning of the century, had lamented the problems caused by the growth of their city.6 Therefore, although the concerns...