In the days before asphalt, dust was a constant companion
The dust the last few days has really been intolerable to we storekeepers.
– Gazette, Thursday, April 27, 1865 It
once was an unwelcome fact of life in Montreal. Once winter’s snow had disappeared from the unpaved streets, dust returned. As carriages and wagons drove to and fro, it swept up to cover everything it touched.
Billows hanging in the air could be seen from afar by anyone approaching the city. In 1857, a traveller from the Eastern Townships wrote in his diary, “Reached Montreal at 4 o’clock – lovely weather, delightful temperature – but extremely dusty – we could see clouds of dust hovering over the town.”
The problem had persisted for years. “During the last eight or 10 days,” The Gazette complained in 1826, “the town has been enveloped in dust, which is not only hurtful to the eyes but finds its way into houses and shops, soils goods and gives a great deal of unnecessary trouble.”
Municipal regulations at the time obliged “all proprietors or occupants” to sweep up the dirt in front of their buildings every Saturday, after which it would be carted away, but the regulation was poorly enforced.
In 1839, a Baptist minister named Newton Bosworth published a book titled Hochelaga Depicta in which he deplored the “enormous and very inconvenient degree” to which dust afflicted the city. When swallowed, it “cannot fail to produce some injury to the general health, and the mortar that is formed in the eyes by the union of their moisture with the powdered lime must be pernicious to those delicate organs.”
Watering the streets was all very well, Bosworth wrote, but that didn’t address the fundamental problem: the material used in surfacing the streets.
“The harder and less friable these materials are,” he continued, “the greater will be the freedom from annoyance. … The limestone ordinarily used in making roads here is easily pulverized and will endure but little wear before it becomes offensive.”
He suggested that a harder mineral like granite be used, or even that the streets be paved with wood.
A letter to the editor of The Gazette one spring day in 1865, signed A Sufferer, complained that the dust “is, indeed, a most ruinous evil, and pedestrians are almost suffocated and choked with it.”
Sufferer had a remedy. “We have plenty of water,” he continued, “and if we are to have the streets watered at all, surely now is the time. Then why don’t our city slowcoaches make a move?”
It was a good question. The city had long acknowledged it had a part to play in keeping down the dust. Once it organized a fire department in 1863 to replace the old volunteer companies, it was the new department that took on the job.
It seemed an obvious way to handle the problem. The fire department had horses and water carts, and its men were idle for most of the day. And should a fire break out, church bells would sound the alarm, bringing the men rushing back to their stations. But Sufferer’s complaint suggests the firemen simply didn’t have enough water carts to deal with the sheer volume of dust.
In any event, fire chief Alexander Bertram and his men were unhappy with doing such double duty. They argued, with some justification, that no matter how quickly the church bells might begin to ring, there was an unacceptable delay in getting to the fire. The horses, too, might be slower off the mark, especially if watering the streets on a hot summer’s day had taken an extra toll on their energy. In due course the city agreed it would be responsible for dust suppression directly. But the problem persisted.
In 1880, for example, a taxpayer with property on Commissioners St., today’s de la Commune, indignantly wrote to The Gazette. “This street,” he complained, “through which more traffic passes than through any other in the city, is only watered late in the afternoon, allowing residents, those having offices and all having business in it to suffer from clouds of dust during the hottest part of the day.”
Asphalt started coming into use late in the 19th century, but crumbly, limestonebased macadam could still be found for years. Indeed, many streets, especially in outlying areas, might not be surfaced at all.
If anything, the dust problem got worse when cars and trucks came to the streets at the beginning of the last century. Their speed alone saw to that, and their exhausts added to the assault on people’s lungs. The dust billows are now essentially a thing of the past, but not the fumes.