Urban Rivers: Remaking Rivers, Cities, and Space in Europe and North America

4. The Rivière des Prairies: More than Montreal's Backyard?

75 THe military metapHor in this excerpt is an apt description of the drive to conquer territory and nature in the first half of the twentieth century. The spread of urbanization seemed inexorable, as did the progress that it heralded. Like other commentators of his era, the geographer Pierre Dagenais observed the setting from what he considered to be the front of the city, facing the St. Lawrence River. From this viewpoint, the Island of Montreal’s north side appeared as merely a backyard, an appendage to industrious Montreal awaiting imminent urbanization. Yet, even as the geographer penned these lines, the “back” of the city and the Rivière des Prairies, a waterway sometimes referred to as the Back River, were in the throes of transformation. They were much more connected to Montreal, through a set of infrastructure facilities, particularly those related to water, than he seemed to assume. Although it is only a secondary arm of the Ottawa River some thirty miles long, the Rivière des Prairies is generally considered a waterway in its own right. It rises in the Lake of Two Mountains to the west of Montreal and flows along the north shore of the island into the St. Lawrence at the northeastern tip of the island (figure 4.1). From the end of the nineteenth century, the Rivière des Prairies, particularly its central section between Cartierville and Montreal North, was pressured from many sides as the City of Montreal spilled over its borders and spread to the crest of the island. While the already •4 THe riviÈre Des Prairies More than Montreal's backyard? MiChÈle dagenaiS A new horizon is opening up to the east and to the west, on each side of the obstacle of Mount Royal. . . . Like two armed columns advancing, these two shoots are drawing closer and closer together to the north of the green oasis of Mount Royal and closing the circle. . . . Development is not over . . . particularly between the mountain and the Rivière des Prairies, and then in the small neighboring municipalities . Thus, Montreal can still expand considerably without leaving its island. —Pierre Dagenais, “Le milieu physique” 76 figUre 4.1. Montreal and its environs, 1900. Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec. tHe rivière des prairies 77 urbanized districts on the south side disposed of their sewage by dumping it into the St. Lawrence, the new areas on the north side discharged theirs into the Rivière des Prairies, as did the small communities that developed along its shores. Contrary to the bucolic image of the Rivière des Prairies that prevailed at the time,1 this was a watercourse on its way to being integrated into the urban space, with various uses that did not fail to provoke debate and conflict. The construction of a hydroelectric dam in the 1920s at the Sault-auR écollet rapids, located next to the town of the same name, represented a major turning point that accelerated the river’s transformation. The plan to dam the river provoked strong fears and objections, not because of the opposition of preindustrial users of the waterway but more due to a clash between two developing sociotechnical systems.2 While the first such system centered on the use of flow differentials to generate electricity, the second, on the contrary , rested on the essential role played by the diluting power of the rapids in the drainage plan for the north side of the Island of Montreal. This chapter examines the genesis of these two systems, whose consequences would redefine both the river’s configuration and Montrealers’ relationship to the river itself. Each system initially raised the issue of access to running water and the modalities surrounding its exploitation. By escalating the river’s utilization, they called into question the preexisting arrangements that had allowed relatively compatible uses of the Rivière des Prairies to coexist. The two systems led to the adoption of a new definition of the waterway and its status as a public good, which became necessary in order to effect changes to it. Up until the beginning of the twentieth century, it was the navigability of a waterway that determined its status as a public good.3 However, this changed with the proposal to use flow to generate electricity. As elsewhere in Canada in the wake of the discovery of electricity, hydraulic power acquired the status of a...