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Canadian Urbanism Uncovered

Photo du Jour – Station de Pompage Craig

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Station de Pompage Craig
In april 1886, the water level of the Saint-Lawrence river rose so high that the city was flooded all the way up to Square Victoria.

The next year, the city built two pumping stations: The station de Pompage Craig (originally on rue Craig now located on Notre Dame Est, and the corner of De Lorimier) and the Riverside station, just east of the Boneventure.

According to a 2002 report (pdf) by an industrial heritage group, this structure still contains the 4 centrifugal pumps and 4 steam engines that were used to prevent flooding. The pumps were employed almost every winter between 1887 and 1950 to prevent springtime flooding. The operation consumed 300 tonnes of coal each year and the city had to rent land from the adjacent Molson Brewery and Canadian Pacific lands to store it.

The water level of the Saint-Lawrence stabilized after it was canalized in the 1950s and ice-breakers were employed to keep it navigable year-round, and the city abandoned the pumping station altogether in the 1990s.

Photo taken Feb 21st 2009.

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4 comments

  1. Thank You for sharing the information on the various pumping stations.

    Years ago, when travelling to the South Shore on the Montreal and Southern Counties Ry from McGill St. to the Victoria Bridge we passed by the Mill/Riverside Pumping Station quite frequently.

    Later we found the Craig Pumping Station on our trips to the East end of the city. Amazing structure from the outside.

    I have always wondered if the steam machinery is still inside?

    The PDF file is very interesting.

    The note on the high water caused by ice also explains the swinging gate that was once on the CPR/NHB railway line at the foot of McGill St. which could be closed during high water as shown in a previous photo at Spacing Montreal.

    My memory is vague, but I do recall a road tunnel at the upstream end of the Clock Tower Quai/basin??which passed beneath the Harbours Board tracks, and this tunnel was often barracaded when ice caused the St. Lawrence to back up ice and water into the harbour.

    Between Berri and Bonsecours if I am remembering rightly.

    The interior of the tunnel was lined with stone and was quite spooky.

    If I recall correctly, this tunnel, although long-closed to vehicular and pedestrian traffic by then, was used in a film named Jesus de Montreal.

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097635/

    When I was a child my father and I used to ride the streetcar down East to near where the Louis Hyppolyte tunnel is now located, and watch the icebreakers smashing their way upstream from Lac St. Pierre.

    We would walk out on the ice, and feel it moving as the ships rammed the ice in the channel.

    In this era the first ocean freighter to reach Montreal harbour each spring received a gold-headed cane from the Mayor, one of the ships was named the ‘Helga Dan.’

    C. 1964 a similar ship was sunk by ice in the St. Lawrence below Jacques Cartier Bridge.

    Now, the Craig pumping station. If the Steam machinery is still intact it should be preserved. Hopefully it will not be scrapped to pay for renovations.

    Being a realist, I understand that to move and relocate machinery of that weight will not be easy, or cheap.

    Hamilton, Ontario HAS preserved a OPERATING steam pumping engine at their water works on Burington Bay from 1859.

    http://www.era.on.ca/portfolio/view.php?portfolio_id=43

    Winnipeg also has/had a Fire Pumping Station with all the machinery intact on my last visit in 1999.

    This station was to provide adequate fire hydrant pressure after a fire caused much damage due to lack of water.

    http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/mb_history/13/jamespumpingstation.shtml

    http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2008/05/21/pumping-station.html

    The Winnipeg pumping engines are huge! and are unique in that they have TWO cylinders on ONE piston rod, called ‘Tandem’, which, thru a crosshead and guides, revolved a crank and a flywheel which, in turn operated the pumps beneath the floor.

    They are NOT Steam, but LARGE internal combustion Gasoline engines!

    Rows of mufflers line the roof.

    The machinery in the Winnipeg plant is DOOMED, it will just take time. Greed works slow, but, never stops.

    Anyway, this is another story that has gotten out of hand.

    The point is, the Industrial heritage that is still extant is in great danger, as those money-hungry selzo developers, blinded by profit, who are always in league with the greedy at City Hall who sign off on the building permits, zoning and other rubber stamp paperwork required to sell heritage, or arable land, down the tubes for a buck.

    Now gone is the small two-generator hydro power plant adjacent to the Cote St Paul locks of the Lachine Canal constructed of red brick in that interesting/ugly architecture of the Victoria era.

    Hydro Quebec’s Poste LaSalle adjacent to La Salle Coke was full of interesting steam equipment, long gone, also.

    Here is an 1899 Hydro generating station on the Soulanges canal which supplied power to the canal.

    Probably safe for now. I do not know if the machinery is still inside.

    http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3211/2687095186_3bcd0f50a4.jpg?v=0

    Quebec Hydro’s Les Cedres plant is also quite antique, but modernized.

    Sadly, there is not much tourist appeal = $$$ to static machinery at any time, and money talks, no matter what.

  2. Thank You! for posting the photos!

    It is something to see all that brickwork and one has to consider the man hours involved to manufacture the bricks at a brick works, transport them to the job site, then manually place them.

    I presume there was an interior form to hold them in place until the ‘Arch’ was formed.

    Hopefully good images of the pumps and their engines will find their way to this site!!!

    Years ago I had to enter ‘Man Holes’ and we had a list of tests we had to perform to ensure safety in regards to various gasses that might be present.

    Sewer gasses along with natural gas could migrate to conduits and thence to cable vaults. The oxygen in the air could be used up by ‘rusting’ of ferric metals with little air circulation.

    Two employees and two rescue personel were sufficated in a small pump house cellar near here at a mine a couple of years back due to lack of oxygen.

    I have a Steam Ticket and spent several years Firing and Running a stationary boiler and steam locomotives and they are something to behold.

    One cannot ever forget the power and potential danger of steam itself and the latent danger with the very hot water under significant pressure within the boiler.

    One sage said something along the lines of; ‘Working with steam is like being in a cage with a hungry tiger, the TIGER can sleep.’

    http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b61/SDR_North/Engineer.jpg

    http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b61/SDR_North/FiringStationaryBoilerOnWood2000.jpg

    T’would be nice to have some of the machinery up and running at the Craig Pump House, albeit powered by an electric motor for safety, as an exibit.

    The pump engine at Hamilton, Ont. is operable, as there is steam ‘on hand’ for other purposes, but it operates on 50 PSI at a slow speed.

    If one of the pumping engines at Winnipeg could be rescued, it would make a great display, as it is internal combustion and gets away from all the boiler laws which can make or break any ‘steam’ operation.

    Another story that has grown too long.

    Some one should watchguard the engines at the pumping staion or they will get scrapped right under one’s noses.

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