Mount Royal tunnel
Still an amazing achievement, 100 years later.
Some 30,000 rail commuters pass through the Mount Royal tunnel each day. Yet surely few give a moment’s thought to what a remarkable achievement the tunnel is.
The digging of the tunnel, still the second longest in Canada, was an engineering tour de force. It made possible the founding of Town of Mount Royal, now celebrating its centennial. It opened other areas beyond the mountain to urbanization. It even played a significant — though unintended — role in the creation of Canadian National Railways.
The tunnel was the brainchild of Henry K. Wicksteed, chief engineer of surveys for the Canadian Northern Railway. As the 20th century dawned, the upstart Canadian Northern was challenging the Canadian Pacific to become the country’s next rail line to the Pacific Ocean. But without a suitable terminal in Montreal, then Canada’s premier city, this dream would be doomed.
Alas, the Canadian Northern was stuck with a small, ramshackle depot in east-end Hochelaga. The heart of the city, squeezed between the mountain and the waterfront some six kilometres away, was heavily built up, with all potential rights of way already occupied by the Canadian Pacific and another major railroad, the Grand Trunk.
Wicksteed had been pondering the problem since at least 1904. If a new rail line couldn’t go around the mountain, he thought, why not route the line under it?
By 1910, the Canadian Northern’s dilemma was acute. That fall, the railroad’s founders, two hard-driving financiers named William Mackenzie and Donald Mann, convened a secret meeting in Montreal, and there Wicksteed’s idea was explored in earnest.
The plan that emerged had several parts.
In St-Eustache, new rails would branch off from the Canadian Northern mainline, cross the farmland then occupying much of what is now Laval (Île Jésus) and Montreal Island, enter a tunnel on the mountain’s north side, then pop up — surprise! — in downtown Montreal. Considerable tracts of that out-of-the-way farmland could be bought on the cheap, not just to accommodate the right-of-way, but also to be subdivided into residential lots whose sale could help finance the project. Finally, land at the downtown end would be acquired for a terminal, company headquarters and an office-and-hotel complex.
Another of Mackenzie and Mann’s lieutenants was Andrew Duncan Davidson, their chief land agent. In just a few days the following spring, Davidson managed to acquire the needed real estate before anyone really knew what was happening. He moved stealthily; if people had suspected a deep-pocketed railroad was involved, the price of the land would have skyrocketed.
Later in 1911, plans for a new community beyond the mountain, a model city laid out according to the most advanced principles of urban design, were announced. Lots went on sale early in 1912, and with its Dec. 21 incorporation Town of Mount Royal became Quebec’s newest municipality.
The digging of the tunnel had already begun that sum-
The city of Montreal feared its reservoir near the Royal Victoria Hospital might spring a leak.
mer, proceeding from both extremities at once. Pneumatic drills and blasting were used, and the rubble was removed in little “dump-cars” running on temporary rails. Such was the planning by Wicksteed and his colleagues that there were very few technical problems. But there were some of another sort.
A prominent lawyer harrumphed that he would seek an injunction preventing the tunnel from passing beneath his Sherbrooke St. mansion. McGill University wondered if some of its buildings might begin sinking into the ground. The city of Montreal feared its reservoir near the Royal Victoria Hospital might spring a major leak and drain away. All had to be pacified.
On Dec. 9, 1913, the two headings finally met. When the rubble was cleared away, it was discovered they were out by just 1.9 centimetres in alignment and an astonishing 0.64 centimetres in elevation — this, over a length of five kilometres.
The temporary rails were linked up, and the following day 60 dignitaries gathered at the Town end. They got into a string of dump-cars, first being warned not to touch the wires alarmingly close overhead that supplied the tiny electric engine. It was slow going, for they often had to duck at low spots in the tunnel. A few plucked off a loose rock or two as souvenirs.
When they got to where the two headings had met, there was loud cheering and everyone sang O Canada. They emerged at the Montreal end an hour and a quarter later, the first passengers ever to pass through the Mount Royal tunnel.
Yet it would be years before paying passengers followed; the outbreak of the First World War saw to that. Manpower, rolling stock and construction materials were soon in short supply.
Only on Oct. 21, 1918, did the tunnel finally open for business, and even then it was a low-key affair. The devastating Spanish flu made it imprudent to schedule ceremonies where crowds of people would mill about, breathing on one another.
The double-tracked tunnel cost about $5 million to build, and it was the last straw for the Canadian Northern. Badly overstretched financially in its rush across the continent, the railroad went under scarcely two months later, soon to become a major part of the governmentowned CNR.
The magnificent terminal, hotel and office complex foreseen by Mackenzie and Mann had to wait another four decades — hence the infamous “hole” that disfigured Dorchester Blvd. for so long. The complex finally emerged, much altered, in the form of Place Ville Marie and the Queen Elizabeth Hotel.
But at least one spinoff of the grand tunnel dream was realized. Where there were a mere few farmhouses a century ago, Town of Mount Royal has become a thriving community of nearly 20,000 people where residential, commercial and industrial areas are admirably balanced.
Indeed, in 2008, the federal government designated most of the Town a National Historic Site, in recognition of its “synthesis of urban renewal movements of the early 20th century.”