Hôtel de ville between Sherbrooke and de Maisonneuve is by far the best place to ride a bike in the city. I love taking people down it who don’t know about the hill because they don’t see it coming. The first little dip seems like the hill from afar but it’s not until you get past it that you realise how steep the hill is. Some people love it, others curse me for taking them down it! (usually this depends on how well the breaks on their bike work)
Don’t do it unless you know they have good brakes, as you could kill them. Some types of brakes aren’t really adequate for such a hill, even if they have been properly tuned.
Descending from Westmount at the Fire Station down Cote St Luc Rd. to Decarie and Girouard on a bike before the expressway was built was something else, too.
With the traffic you would never try it now.
Descending Des Erables from Montreal West to Ville St. Pierre was safer in the ‘Old Days’ as there used to be a manually-flagged level crossing at the bottom before CNR moved operations from Turcot to Montreal Yard c. 1960.
Big jump as you crested the tracks into lower VSP.
We used to follow Riviere St. Pierre from up near Blue Bonnets raceway at Decarie thru Cote St. Luc and Mtl. West. Under the CPR to Dorval at Wentworth Golf Course at Sortin and then by the front of then-new Northern Electric on 2-17.
Then thru the scrap yard by the canal behind the still-extant Montreal Tramways Substation by 6th ave in VSP, it now being a Taverne.
This ‘River’ wove it’s way thru Turcot yards to Cote St. Paul and, back in the early 1900s it would flood in the spring causing grief on the Tramways’ Lachine line.
Rumours persist that there is still a sunken locomotive in the Turcot yard.
Another rumour is that they used 2 spans of the 1859 Tubular Pont Victoria as conduit for Riviere St. Pierre in Cote St. Paul when PV was rebuilt.
I only rode it once on my bike.
Upwards.
* * *
There is a movie (“Special Magnum”, with Martin Landau) whose obligatory car chase sequence has a bit filmed there where the perpetrator passes another car… from above.
4 comments
Hôtel de ville between Sherbrooke and de Maisonneuve is by far the best place to ride a bike in the city. I love taking people down it who don’t know about the hill because they don’t see it coming. The first little dip seems like the hill from afar but it’s not until you get past it that you realise how steep the hill is. Some people love it, others curse me for taking them down it! (usually this depends on how well the breaks on their bike work)
Don’t do it unless you know they have good brakes, as you could kill them. Some types of brakes aren’t really adequate for such a hill, even if they have been properly tuned.
Descending from Westmount at the Fire Station down Cote St Luc Rd. to Decarie and Girouard on a bike before the expressway was built was something else, too.
With the traffic you would never try it now.
Descending Des Erables from Montreal West to Ville St. Pierre was safer in the ‘Old Days’ as there used to be a manually-flagged level crossing at the bottom before CNR moved operations from Turcot to Montreal Yard c. 1960.
Big jump as you crested the tracks into lower VSP.
We used to follow Riviere St. Pierre from up near Blue Bonnets raceway at Decarie thru Cote St. Luc and Mtl. West. Under the CPR to Dorval at Wentworth Golf Course at Sortin and then by the front of then-new Northern Electric on 2-17.
Then thru the scrap yard by the canal behind the still-extant Montreal Tramways Substation by 6th ave in VSP, it now being a Taverne.
This ‘River’ wove it’s way thru Turcot yards to Cote St. Paul and, back in the early 1900s it would flood in the spring causing grief on the Tramways’ Lachine line.
Rumours persist that there is still a sunken locomotive in the Turcot yard.
Another rumour is that they used 2 spans of the 1859 Tubular Pont Victoria as conduit for Riviere St. Pierre in Cote St. Paul when PV was rebuilt.
I only rode it once on my bike.
Upwards.
* * *
There is a movie (“Special Magnum”, with Martin Landau) whose obligatory car chase sequence has a bit filmed there where the perpetrator passes another car… from above.