Used as a snow dump, the site of the former Francon quarry (now known as the Saint-Michel quarry) looks like a huge crater of greenery in the heart of Montreal. This area covers approximately 20% (17% to be exact) of the district of Saint-Michel...
The plant itself is definitively not as great at we saw in other places. Located in the heart of Pointe-Saint-Charles neighborhood of Montreal, this two storey building has no longer the cachet of its heyday. While neighboring buildings are gradually revamped to accommodate them new condo owners, nothing seems to have changed over here. Nature has reasserted itself in the courtyard with all these trees, aged of dozen years old.
This factory was creating billboards of any kind (for sale, do not enter, etc). By entering, we find on the floor an old mattress surrounded by waste. As we approach a bit, we discover that beyond the old Doritos and Ruffles bags, there was syringes and condoms. Junkie's shelter probably.
A junkie poet, I must specify. On the walls, we discover parts of William Blake's poems, an English painter and poet of the nineteenth century. Jim Morrison of the Doors, has also chosen the name of his band by refering to a quotation from Blake's poem "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell": "If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite".
On the ground floor, it is rather a verse from a song by Keny Arkana adorning the wall to the right of the entrance: "We want billions who are trying to turn the wheel in the opposite direction. (On est des milliards à vouloir faire tourner la roue dans l'autre sens)"
Also here are some other verses (in french) who can be found on the walls here and there:
Used as a snow dump, the site of the former Francon quarry (now known as the Saint-Michel quarry) looks like a huge crater of greenery in the heart of Montreal. This area covers approximately 20% (17% to be exact) of the district of Saint-Michel...
Cynically, we could almost say that the factory is as large as the village in which it is located. You should know that we are far away in the countryside, it that kind of place where everybody know each other by his first name. At first glance,...
It takes a lot of motivation to get to this old mine and foundry abandoned since 2002. For it must be admitted that we are rather far from everything in this distant municipality of 650 inhabitants. Moreover, if this village exists, it is above...
The use of asbestos by man does not date from yesterday. Already, more than 2000 years ago, the Greeks used in making funeral clothes. Its name comes from its property to withstand fire: άσβεστος (asbestos, meaning "indestructible").
Its...