Ghost River
Stories of a River and the Story of a
Collector and the River it Swallowed
This research project questions how discourses and practices of modernity and development have led to the physical transformations of the Saint-Pierre River, and how these relate to the different material practices, representations, and symbolic nature of the river.
Using historical-geographical materialism methodologies, an ethnographic inquiry into human, non-human and infrastructure actors, and counter mapping we seek to develop a recursive (re)shaping of the water infrastructure that has absorbed and exhausted the Saint-Pierre River. Such methodologies will allow us to identify how infrastructure was used to colonize and lay claim to the area, as well as illustrate alternatives to “the incremental destruction of sustaining habitats” (Aberley, 1993:4). Through the creation of a counter map and ethnography of the river and water infrastructure, we will contest the homogenization of the space as it represented in zoning regulations, land-use maps, and property regimes to offer new means of expressing hydro-social relationships in place.
In considering the material concerns that have come to bear on the construction of infrastructure in Montreal’s southwest area (i.e. the Lachine Canal, the railroads and yards, the Turcot Interchange, etc.), as well as public health and water quality issues we will work to “daylight” the historical policies, decisions, and motivations that have resulted in the burying of the river. The flows of fresh water, sewage, and storm water in urban spaces represent complex arrangements between human and non-human dimensions that challenge us to think about the ways in which policies and everyday practices intersect with the materiality of the world. As an actor within bio-cultural worlds, water infrastructure is in a dynamic interaction with the environment (Lea, 2017) while materializing ideologies and discourses of development, progress and modernity.
Ghost River is part of the Montreal Waterways working group. The project is run by Kregg Hetherington, Tricia Toso, Kassandra Lockyer-Spooner, Marie-Eve Drouin-Gagné, Lucien Fizzera, and Alejandra Melian-Morse.