I’ve been reading the book Atlas historique de Montréal by Jean-Claude Robert (1994), poring over the generous series of reproductions of ancient maps, starting from Champlain’s Le grand sault Saint-Louis in 1613 to the present-day. The map by Gaspard-Joseph Chaussegros de Léry (1733) is intriguing in its detailing of the Sulpicians’ proposed canal project. What I find striking is the size of Lac Saint-Pierre, a large bloated, organ-like shape that lies in the area of the present-day Lachine canal. Roberts describes how as early as 1670, plans were underway for a canalization project to avoid the treacherous passage through the Lachine rapids. The plan was to link Lac Saint-Louis to the smaller Lac Saint-Pierre, then to dig and divert the Rivière à Pierre towards Pointe-à-Callière instead of its natural discharge into the Saint-Laurent, near L’Île-des-Soeurs.
The petit lac Saint-Pierre was often referred to as Lac-aux-Loutres during the French Regime because First Nation people regularly navigated in the reed-filled marshlands and extended waterways to hunt for otter. The abott Cyprien Tanguay mentions this lake in The Dictionnaire généalogique des familles canadiennes depuis la fondation de la colonie jusqu'à nos jours (1871):
VACHER dit St. Julien, Sylvestre, b 1622, tué par les Iroquois, près du lac aux loutres: 26 oct. 1659, à Montréal.
Walking home from Saint-Henri on rue de Courcelle, I came across the small parc du Lac-à-la-loutre. A panel stated that it was the site of the 18th century lake. Engineers later drained this body of water to build the Lachine Canal. I noticed a wide asphalted space that started from the park all the way to St-Rémi. A long empty corridor, it did not seem to follow the street grid. I wasn't alone in my puzzlement. Benoit Gratton points out on his blog that this alley way was once the site of the petite rivière Saint-Pierre. On the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales site, you can access an impressive collection of digitized maps and plans. The Atlas of the City of Montreal and vicinity (1912) shows a dotted line to indicate the canalization of “Little River Pierre” with the inscription “River Covered In”. Almost a hundred years later, the city is planning to create a multifunctional green space on this very site in an effort to combat heat islands and build community. I hope there are plans to include some sort of museological display or monument to showcase how the petite rivière Saint-Pierre played a role in the construction of the Lachine Canal.
Another online archive of interest is the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection with over 150,000 maps focusing on rare 18th and 19th century maps of North and South America. The Plan of Montreal, with a Map of the Islands & adjoining Country by John Melish (1815) has an amusing depiction of Lac-aux-loutres – like an outsized ameba. I'm drawn to this mutable association because a lake is indeed like a shape shifter, its water levels waxing and waning depending on climate and time. This is the crux of my Tongue Rug project — the fact that a lake can never be documented in the same way. There will always be discrepancies in mapping practices through time, not to mention the intent of the cartographer.
When reading Roughing it in the Bush (1852), I liked how Susanna Moodie described the marshland near her home in the Douro Towneship; she coined the expression "beaver meadow". South of the ancient beaver-meadow of Lac-aux-loutres was the tranquil Village de la Côte Saint Paul that appears on a map of the island of Montreal as early as 1702. This pastoral landscape is no more: walking in the boroughs of Côte-Saint-Paul and Ville-Émard today, you will likely hear the dull roar from the Turcot interchange.
Living in N.D.G., it was routine to see a family of skunks parade about as soon as dusk set in, as well as a pair of lumbering raccoons that would fight in a tree outside my apartment. Likewise in Émard these night critters are a habitual sight. Yet I still find it difficult to imagine otters ever having inhabited the area north of the Canal when contemplating the barren Turcot yards.
I’ve never seen otters in the wild; just a pair at the Ecomuseum Zoo in Sainte-Anne de Bellevue. Last time I was at the Redpath museum, a stuffed specimen caught my attention by its sheer size — the Lutra Canadensis. I returned for a visit intent on sketching the animal. Equipped with a pen and some bits of paper, I attempted to capture the sleek graceful curve of the back and the open mouth displaying a set of tiny, sharp teeth. My drawings did not do it justice. My otter looked too canine-like and I did not capture the beady eyes nor the flattish head, expressively designed to dive into the water without making a ripple. I would need to return with proper sketching material.
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