Christmas, coming in a few daysies, marks the 100 th anniversary of a dry disaster which left 350,000 people without water.
The problem started at 5 p.m. on Dec. 25, 1913 with the effort to widen the aqueduct in Verdun. The dredging effort led workers to crack a conduit in the water just in front of the Douglas Hospital. The conduit was a nine foot pipe built to bring clean water in from the St. Lawrence, it was initially planted in the then-northernmost limit in 1909 but the widening placed that once-secure pipe into the middle of the waterway.
The pipes went dry in the downtown core from Atwater to Papineau and from St. Catherine to Sherbrooke. The New York Times reported that people were paying $6 for a cask of water on the black market during that period. City officials were pressured to get it fixed as fast as possible and showed some promise of returning a few drips within a few days and some progress was made by Dec. 30.
The original aqueduct, built by T.C. Keefer in 1864, was just eight feet deep and 30 feet wide. City Engineer George Janin's plan was to widen it to 130 feet.
Residents were greatly bothered by their inability to access water, especially those who used it for heating. Newspapers updated progress daily with complex political and technical explanations. On Jan. 8 an engineer said that there was no news being issued because it was too technical to explain, more money was thrown into the effort of making a new conduit a few days later, and more chinwags, the next day more....etc.
The problem started at 5 p.m. on Dec. 25, 1913 with the effort to widen the aqueduct in Verdun. The dredging effort led workers to crack a conduit in the water just in front of the Douglas Hospital. The conduit was a nine foot pipe built to bring clean water in from the St. Lawrence, it was initially planted in the then-northernmost limit in 1909 but the widening placed that once-secure pipe into the middle of the waterway.
The pipes went dry in the downtown core from Atwater to Papineau and from St. Catherine to Sherbrooke. The New York Times reported that people were paying $6 for a cask of water on the black market during that period. City officials were pressured to get it fixed as fast as possible and showed some promise of returning a few drips within a few days and some progress was made by Dec. 30.
The original aqueduct, built by T.C. Keefer in 1864, was just eight feet deep and 30 feet wide. City Engineer George Janin's plan was to widen it to 130 feet.
Residents were greatly bothered by their inability to access water, especially those who used it for heating. Newspapers updated progress daily with complex political and technical explanations. On Jan. 8 an engineer said that there was no news being issued because it was too technical to explain, more money was thrown into the effort of making a new conduit a few days later, and more chinwags, the next day more....etc.