St. Pierre River:
too altered to be classified

The Ministère de la Culture et des Communications refuses its classification as a heritage site

By Louise Legault

August 8, 2024

Readers of Westmount Magazine have been following the story of the St. Pierre River, the 200-metre creek that used to run through the Meadowbrook golf course in Lachine, the only remaining section of the historic St. Pierre River.

The St. Pierre River once ran 43 km from the foot of Mount Royal all the way to the St. Lawrence River. It drained a vast basin renowned for the excellence of its agricultural produce (the Montreal melon comes to mind). With industrialization and a growing Montreal population, the river became polluted and unhealthy over time and was gradually buried along most of its course, save for a meander that remained in Lachine.

Canalized in the winter of 2022 following an unfortunate court decision, this stubborn survivor nonetheless overflowed its banks in the spring of the following year. This prompted Les amis du parc Meadowbrook to pull out all the stops and apply to the Ministère de la Culture et des Communications to have the creek classified as a heritage site. We emphasized the historical, emblematic, environmental and landscape values of this ecosystem. The idea was to preserve its bed – which would be prone to erosion and, over time, to filling – in the event of any future daylighting.

We can only hope that the St. Pierre River will be the last Montreal river to suffer such a fate and that one day, the services rendered by this little stream will be recognized…

This was without counting on a final salvo of court-ordered work to decontaminate the creek’s banks and bottom. The creek had been contaminated by the storm sewer that fed it, itself contaminated by reverse connections, i.e. domestic sewer connections that should have been made to the sanitary sewers rather than the storm sewers. By widening and deepening the creek, this work has altered the natural aspect of the watercourse to such an extent that the Ministry had to refuse its classification.

We can only hope that the St. Pierre River will be the last Montreal river to suffer such a fate and that one day, the services rendered by this little stream will be recognized: refreshing the air, absorbing overflow during heavy rains and snowmelt, watering passing birds, not to mention the charm it added to the area.

Feature image: the St. Pierre River at Meadowbrook in 2018, courtesy of Les amis du parc Meadowbrook

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