by K. Ha
Only a short walk from the EV-complex, Lachine Canal is a favorite place for students to organize a picnic outing or even to perform serious lab-work measurements on water quality for courses in Environmental Engineering.
The Canal stretches over 14 km from Lake Saint-Louis to the Old Port of Montreal. The large expanse of green space along the Canal and its serene surrounding belie its glorious past steeped in the history of the city.
 
- "The Lachine Canal is a man-made navigable waterway originally designed to bypass the obstacle posed by the Lachine Rapids and facilitate navigation the length of the St. Lawrence River. Its five pairs of locks helped to overcome a drop of about 14 metres. As the forerunner of the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Lachine Canal was a major link in the Canadian system of navigable waterways. It was declared of national historic significance in 1929, and in 1987 the Historic Sites and Monuments Review Board of Canada (HSMBC) reiterated the national historic significance of the canal as a navigable waterway that was part of Canada’s national canal system." [1]
Rendered obsolete by the Saint Lawrence Seaway, the canal was finally closed in late 1969. In 2002, after $40-million restoration work, it was reopened as a pleasure boating area while its banks offer paths for bicycling and rollerblading. Its rejuvenation helps the gentrification of the residential areas along its banks.
 
During the restoration work, care was taken to avoid stirring up the sediment contamination of past industrial activity, but otherwise no actions were taken to decontaminate the sediment laden with heavy metals and PCB [2]:
- "In October 1996, the joint Federal-Provincial Commission created in 1990 to examine the decontamination project released its final report. In their conclusions and recommendations, Commission members stressed that decontaminating the Lachine Canal:
- would produce few benefits, as the sediments found in the bed of the canal did not present a public health risk in view of the projected use of the canal (secondary-contact recreational activities);
- would not reduce contamination of fish flesh;
- would not affect the bacteriological quality of the water;
- could uselessly curtail the project to develop the canal.
- The Commission recommended “nonintervention on the contaminated canal sediments” as well as on the Lachine basin, which presented a weak potential for recontaminating the canal. Among other things, the Commission recommended that Parks Canada institute, as a priority, a plan to locate and eliminate the direct sources of contamination." [3]
Nevertheless, visitors strolling along the banks of the canal during a sunny spring day would witness a variety of wildlife thriving in the canal's environment and vicinity.
The Lachine Canal is a fine example of civil engineering projects that affect profoundly the country's economy, its environment and its people's standard of living.
Lachine Canal's wildlife
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