Focus on Frédéric-Back Park and explore the History.
In 1957, all the quarries that operated on the site were united under the Miron banner. Over time, some of the blasting sessions and various accidents severely irritated the local residents. Protests by citizens made themselves heard, as did spokespeople from the Saint-Michel community. As a result, the Miron firm transformed 75 hectares of the quarry into a landfill site for domestic waste.
The City of Montreal acquired the Miron quarry in 1988 and continued the landfill activities. The two chimneys of the cement factory, emblematic of Saint-Michel, were demolished in front of an audience of 50,000 people. During the 1990s, the city set up a sorting center for recycling and a power plant to convert the biogas extracted from the landfill site into electricity.From 1995, the site constantly was being reworked under the direction of the City in order to make it an urban green space. As of 2020, it is comparable in size to Mount Royal Park. A cycling and pedestrian path, transformed into a cross-country ski trail in winter, is laid out all around the park. In 2017, two new sections, Parvis Papineau and Boisé Est, totaling 17.7 hectares, were opened to the public.Frédéric-Back Park is set to become one of the largest urban parks in the city by the middle of the 2020s, with an estimated area of 153 hectares (out of the 192 hectares of the complex). It represents “one of the most ambitious environmental remediation projects ever undertaken in an urban setting in North America". The works is planned to be completed by 2026.
Mount Royal Park Mount Royal Saint-Michel Montreal biogas urban park City of Montreal