The Lachine Canal turns 200 years old!

Ken Conner is filling in for Andrew who's back after a nice holiday break. I'll be back here on Monday morning at 653. Well, it's been an industrial and industrial highway and of course an attractive destination and location for developers and it's celebrating. It's 200 years.

Montreal's Le Chincanelle turning 200 years old this year. So what makes it such a staple in Montreal and such a source of pride for many? Stephen High is a history professor and founding member for the Center for Oral History and Digital Storytelling at Concordia. And he joins me for a chat. Stephen, good morning.

Good morning. Nice to have you on the show. Thanks for joining me. When I think of the Lushin Canal today, I think of all the development around it. Especially in the summertime, it's such a great destination and that great walk you can take from Griffin Town down to the Atwater Market. You've probably heard a lot of stories over the years about the Lushin Canal. Yeah, I sure have. It's a big part of Montreal's history, Canadian history,

Like when it was first built in 1825, it was shortly after the war of 1812 when the United States invaded Canada. And the British felt that we needed to shore up the defense of Canada. And so they invested a lot of money into building canals, right, in order to be able to get British naval vessels into the heart of North America. And so then, of course, it was like the really ground zero of Canada's industrial revolution at one point.

The whole canal was lined by factories. And behind those factories were these neighborhoods. And these is where the stories come, right? And we interviewed them, you know, a lot of former residents and people who worked in those factories. And they had a strong connection to, you know, to, to the canal. Like one of my favorite stories that we heard over and over and over again was, was New Year's. You know, we just had New Year's and the tradition in, in Southwest Montreal was to,

uh... open all the doors and windows at midnight on january first and all the trains and all the factories and all the ships would sound their horns and to their whistles it's like an urban company i i i i i love the stuff yeah uh... steven i think and when you when it comes to those factories i saw i saw a bit of you last night on the ct montreal newscast separate i'm newscast at those factories at one point they they employed a staggering amount of people didn't

10,000, like 15% of all the factory workers in Canada worked a lot on the canal, right? And so it was a hugely important, like the beating heart of the industrial economy. And of course, all those factories closed the 1970s and 80s. And you can imagine the impact, right? So we often think of like the US rust belt like Detroit and Cleveland and how those cities were devastated during the 1970s and 80s. It was the same thing in this part of Montreal

you know neighborhood like point thank charles are you know re half the people were unemployed you know over the nineteen seventy eighties early nineties so you can just imagine that impact you know it's a source of pride for many but there's also a lot of debate a lot about the canal and how it's transformed and transition in the current state uh... what do you think it was whose control is it under actually

Well, it's federal land or federal infrastructure. And so when the government sort of built the St. Lawrence Seaway and it opened in 1959, it allowed some of the other side of the river, right? And so it allowed larger vessels to get into Detroit or Cleveland or my hometown of Thunder Bay.

And so what are you going to do with this old canal, right? Like it no longer has its main purpose. And so from 1959 to 1970, it starts to phase out because you're still using a little bit to, you know, still factories that need ships. You still need the waterway in order to, you know, bring in water into these factories. It's also a place where they dump all their garbage, all their effluent. And so it finally closes in 1970,

And so people are debating, what are we going to do? You could imagine the kind of indecitiveness that politicians have. And it was actually the election of the party Quebecois and Renee Levesque in 1976 that really forced the hand of the federal government to decide to make it a park, can't a park, to build those beautiful bike lanes and so on.

you know the uh... one of one of its history is still that's still there is the the five roses building yeah yeah well it it yeah it's a it's an icon of of the city of montreal and and uh... it's one of the few active industrial sites left the only other one that i can think of on like on a canal proper is uh... is robin hood flower right it's still going it's been it's on for the little burgundy side

And so there's very few sort of active industrial sites left, right? And so what we started seeing in the 1980s, like 85, 86, we started to see conversions of former factories into condos. And when that first began, it was totally new. Like, government had no idea, like, what do you do? What do you have to do in order to convert a factory into a residential building? Like, how clean is clean in terms of decontamination?

And so they brought in the laws from the Netherlands, because they had to do something quick, because there was so much demand for converting some of these sites, like Stelko, like the old steel company, Canada, which is at the Charlotte Web Ridge. It was an early conversion, building Coracelli, which is at the Daethu Nure Bridge, was an early conversion.

And of course these are, you know, this is prime real estate now. We've got to wrap up, I'm out of time, but you know, just a quick thought here about how changed its look even further if those plans to build that baseball stadium down there along the canal would have materialized it. Oh yeah, and it still, of course, debates, you know, there was actually above a point. They wanted to build an airport in like that little space by the... Oh, really? Victoria, I'm pretty interested in all kinds of plans, yeah.

Steven, it's been a pleasure having you on the show and thanks for the insight into the history of the canal. Oh, thanks so much for inviting me. All the best. You too. It brings us to a news time. Tom is ready to go. I'll just quickly mention sports wise that the Canadians are back in action, still on the road in Chicago tonight and a heartbreaking loss for a world junior team in Ottawa, losing in the final minute of play to check you and now out of the tournament, losing in a last night by a score of 43.