Spooky funky Griffintown

Griffintown is like the broken down old poet of Montreal neighbourhoods. He squats in stubborn, shabby defiance between the old-world elegance of Old Montreal and the yuppie sleekness of the mega-condo developments clustered along the Lachine canal around the Atwater market, vaguely wondering what happened to his life: once so full of purpose and vitality, it now lies in tatters, its future dissolute.

Settled in the mid-1820s by Irish Catholic labourers who built the Lachine Canal, the area quickly grew into a densely populated neighbourhood of working class immigrants crammed into cheaply made housing... Ok... Let's just call it a slum, because it was.

Griffintown's past is loaded with drama. Through last half of the 1800s, it hosted one of the first labour strikes in Canada; a major breakout of typhoid; two major fires (the latter of which destroyed half the housing); one massive flooding; widespread rioting after the election of Thomas D'Arcy McGee as the area's MP; and the infamous beheading of prosititute Mary Gallagher by a drunken rival (Mary's ghost is rumoured to reappear every seven years to look for her head -- but why every seven years? Do ghosts even have a concept of time?). And that was when the area was at the height of its glory.

The big flood of 1886


In the 1950s when the St. Lawrence Seaway opened, business started draining away from the canal area, and people started moving out en masse on the tide of the post-war economic boom. By the early 60s, the region was so depopulated that the city rezoned the area as light industrial, which prompted landlords to demolish housing to put up squat, non-descript buildings now given over to auto-body joints, long-term storage, and other grimy commercial usage.


In the 1970s, most of the remaining housing was bulldozed under to make room for the construction of the Bonaventure elevated expressway, which further degraded the neighbourhood by slicing it in half.

Griffintown is roughly defined as running west to east from Guy to McGill; and from Notre-Dame to the Lachine Canal.

Its a weird neighbourhood, in that it is almost devoid of the normal trappings of everyday life. There are no cafes, or depanneurs, and very few places to actually live. And the fading traces of its bustling industrial past give it a ghostly feeling, even on a bright, sunny afternoon.

These train tracks from nowhere terminate inside warehouse yards; so they probably once we used to haul materials to and from the Lachine canal.

But amongst the scruffiness, you can find pockets of odd and distinct beauty. This is where you'll find vacant lots that look like country meadows.

Cruising along Basin near St. Martin, its not too surprising to see somebody walking a big, black horse down the street, because this is where the caleche horses are stabled.


The stables are tragically shabby, but the horses have the alert eyes and shiny coats of happy, healthy animals.

Although gentrification is encroaching, Griffintown is refuge to a few good old rundown industrial loft spaces...

...which of course, are the preferred habitat for artists; their spoor is everywhere.

The nexus of artsiness is the Darling Foundry on Ottawa St, just east of the Bonaventure expressway. Originally Montreal's second-biggest producer of metal parts for industrial equipment, the foundry eventually became a victim of Griffintown's industrial decline. After finally closing its doors in 1991, the massive complex sat empty for ten years until it was turned into an arts center, with exhibition spaces, studios for international artists in residency, and other groovy artly events.

The interior retains the taste of the foundry's gritty roots; one of the old ovens used to melt metal lurks in an alcove off the main gallery.

The artwork continues outside into the courtyard at the foundry's entrance. In this installation, the car just sits there, the do-up-your-seatbelt beep going off forlornly.

The foundry's influence bleeds a bit westward along Ottawa, with visual pieces tucked into unexpected places, and a sound installation at the corner of Dalhouse.

One of a series of prints installed in the underpass leading to the Darling Foundry.


Just GUESS what was on the other side of the sign... that's right! Nothing!

Of course, given that Griffintown is so close to downtown, and Old Montreal, and the moderating influnces of the increasingly bourgeois neighborhood of Little Burgundy, its just a matter of time before it gives way to the inexorable march of condofication.

In the meantime, though, it remains a bizarre little netherworld where the normal rules don't seem to apply, populated by the outlaw class... the old, the odd, and the rebellious.