This quarry in Montreal-Est is the last active quarry on the Island. They’ve got about 20 more years to go before the remaining gravel is scraped out of the pit. Then we’re going to have a rather big hole to fill.
Any creative ideas for the space?
Photos taken october 4th and november 26th
8 comments
Lafarge, actually.
Extreme sports park?
Depending on the type of rock, it could turn into a great municipal climbing location, both in the summer and in the winter for ice climbing.
thanks, Kate. fixed.
Michel – I thought the same thing, but friends who rock climb told me that quarries are dangerous for climbing. I’m not an expert on geology, but I know Montreal is mostly sedemantary rock, having been covered by a sea 12,000 years ago.
Natural Resources Canada says that Montreal is “covered by a layer of unconsolidated materials consisting of clay, sand, and gravel” which dosen’t sound like particularly solid rock climbing material to me.
http://geoscape.nrcan.gc.ca/montreal/heritage_e.php
Why not a lake with a surrounding park? God knows the east end could use something like that.
Winter ice climbing park? The Mt Royal ice climbing area only has 3 routes. This could have hundreds.
I hate the word extreme sports, ice climbers carry and use a ton of safety gear.
In summer a mountain bike park, so Mt Royal stays protected from the hiker-biker speed difference conflicts. (Mtn bikes on Mt Royal is not really an environmental problem, but it sure is a user-conflict problem.
Some years ago this was the site chosen for a final year architecture thesis project on … a dinosaur museum! Everyone thought that the project (and the person who did it) were slightly … eccentric. Not surprisingly it was difficult to take the final presentation seriously – there actually was the following exchange amongst the critics:
“My only problem is with the head” [which was the entrance hallway in the design]
“Who’s head?”
Anyway, this really was a serious project and I thought the site plan was perfect!
Quarries USED TO BE filled with garbage when they were done.
Once there were quarries on the north end of St. Denis and along Cote de Liesse of Miron et Freres, etc.
There once were quarries South of Bordeaux Jail.
Water-filled quarries, unless properly landscaped, will always drown children and motorists, a given.
When they were converting old Youville Shops from streetcars to the Metro, they dug down to construct the tunnels from the Metro line to Henri Bourassa and found a quarry full of garbage!
Contour the walls and with creative landscaping make a park?
Is drainage an issue?
Fill it with garbage and then build a park on it.