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| Voie du Fleuve |
Oct 29 – When
I planned this section of my trip (south now!) toward Vermont, I discovered an
extraordinary bike path along the course of the Saint Lawrence River. Through the river, in fact!
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| Montréal seen from the Voie du Fleuve |
The Voie du
Fleuve (Track of the River) is a bike path built on a long thin artificial
island in the Saint Lawrence Seaway. It
stretches 29 km (18 miles) from Île Sainte Hélène, past other islands that
constitute the Couvée Islands Bird Sanctuary, past the ferocious Lachine Rapids
and the car-accessible Récré-O-Parc, to its scenic and rocky end of the line at
a spot in the river that looks like it must have been built for a lighthouse. I won’t be cycling that entire distance, but Google
Maps recommended most of it to go south from Montreal, and it is so scenic and
interesting that I must explore!
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| Biosphère Environmental Museum |
On Île
Sainte Hélène (Saint Helen’s Island), the Biosphere environmental museum was
originally the exhibition pavilion of the United States for the 1967 World
Fair, Expo 67. It was designed by
architect Buckminster Fuller as an example for the world of what Fuller
believed to be an ideal building shape. It
is a Class 1, Frequency 16 Icosahedron.
The structure was made of a steel skeleton 250 ft. high (76 meters) in
diameter covered with acrylic cells. The
“Minirail” monorail ran through the pavilion to other areas around Expo 67.
In 1976, a
fire burned away the building's transparent acrylic bubble, but the hard steel
truss structure remained.
In 1990,
Environment Canada turned the structure into an interactive museum showcasing
and exploring the water ecosystems of the Great Lakes-Saint Lawrence River
regions. A set of new buildings were
built inside the original steel skeleton. The Biosphère became an environment museum
offering interactive activities and presenting exhibitions about environmental
issues related to water, climate change, air, ecotechnologies and sustainable
development. I’ve always admired
Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome idea so I appreciate this
museum-in-a-futuristic-bubble.
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| snow geese, photo by Jacques Pelletier |
The Couvée
Islands Bird Sanctuary was originally established as a refuge for ring-billed
gulls and other migratory birds. No one who
lives near a port, though, admires gulls much, and few people bother to take
pictures of them. These are more
photogenic snow geese.
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| Lachine Rapids |
The Lachine
Rapids in the St. Lawrence River have always been a considerable barrier to
maritime traffic through Montréal. Along
3 miles of the river, because of rocky shelf-like drops underneath, these
rapids contain large standing waves, and the water volume and current do not
change. Seasonal variation in the water
flow does not change the position of the waves, although it does change their
size and shape. In the past, travelers
and merchants had to portage 8 or 9 miles from Montreal's port to the village
of Lachine where they could resume their trip by boat. It was usually more convenient to ship goods
by rail to Montreal, where they could be loaded at the city's port. Montreal
remains a major rail hub and one of Canada's largest ports for that reason.
The original
French name for the village and the rapids was La Chine, in hopes that this was
the Northwest Passage that would lead Europeans to China.
In 1825 the
Lachine Canal was built right through the island of Montreal, and deepened
later, to enable ships to navigate around the rapids in the main river.
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| Lachine Canal in winter |
After the growth and decline of industrial
production, the canal was partially filled in to develop the Métro subway
system and the Underground City. In
2002, parts of the Lachine Canal were reopened as a pleasure boating area,
despite environmental concerns about heavy industrial contamination of its
bottom. An environmental reclamation project continues to clean up old oil
spills. The banks of the canal offer
bicycling and rollerblading. Parks
Canada offers guided tours of the canal by foot, bicycle, and boat during the
summer months.
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| A pilot boat guides the former Canadian Navy DDH Fraser upriver through the South Shore Canal. |
The South
Shore Canal, with the Saint-Lambert and Côte Sainte-Catherine locks, now
enables modern ships to avoid the unpassable rapids. The
Voie du Fleuve (or Voie de la Voie Maritime) is the maintenance access road
built across a series of artificial islands that create the edge of the canal,
which has now become also a bicycle path.
Lachine
Rapids: http://www.barbaradickson.ca/david-cragg/st-lawrence-rapids/
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