Long before it became a summer stomping ground for music heads and art kids, the Peel Basin was Montreal’s industrial deep end. Officially, it was just Reach No. 2 of the Lachine Canal—an engineered “reversal basin” wide and deep enough to let ocean vessels turn around. Unofficially, it was the city’s shipping terminus, a staging point between the Atlantic and the rail lines heading inland. First dug out in the mid-1800s and later reshaped during the canal’s 1873–1884 expansion, the basin powered Montreal’s economic ascent, with nearby factories running on canal-fed hydraulics and flour basins still visible today.
But like much of the city’s working waterfront, it went quiet after the St. Lawrence Seaway opened. Parks Canada stepped in, rewilding parts of the site by the late ‘90s. Now, it’s a magnet for cultural events: Piknic Électronik, FIKA(S), the Grand PoutineFest, Chợ Đêm MTL, and MAPP_MTL’s projections all happen here, framed by silos, graffiti, and the enduring glow of Farine Five Roses. The past never quite left—it just got louder.
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