With over 600 documented ghost stories, Montreal is easily the most haunted city in Canada, if not all of North America. Haunted Montreal dedicates itself to researching these paranormal tales, and the Haunted Montreal Blog unveils a newly researched Montreal ghost story on the 13th of every month!

This service is free and you can sign up to our mailing list (top, right-hand corner for desktops and at the bottom for mobile devices) if you wish to receive it every month on the 13th! The blog is published in both English and French!

With the summer here, Haunted Montreal is running a whole season of ghost tours and haunted experiences! Our ghost tours include Haunted Old Montreal, Griffintown, Downtown and the mountain!

Our Haunted Pub Crawl is offered every Sunday at 3 pm in English. For tours in French, these happen on the last Sunday of every month at 4 pm.

We also offer paranormal investigations! In addition to our investigation of the old Sainte-Antoine Cholera Cemetery, Haunted Montreal is proud to announce our latest experience – Paranormal Investigation – Colonial Old Montreal.

To learn more, see the schedule at the bottom of our home page!

Private tours for all of our experiences (including outdoor tours) can be booked at any time based on the availability of our actors. Clients can request any date, time, language and operating tour. These tours start at $215 for small groups of up to 7 people.

Email info@hauntedmontreal.com to book a private tour!

Lastly, we have an online store for those interested in Haunted Montreal merchandise. More details are below in our Company News section!

This month we explore Montreal’s Forgotten Irish Famine Cemetery at the Wellington Basin on the Lachine Canal. With plans to build a new neighbourhood on the hallowed ground, there are fears that new ghosts and paranormal activity may emerge in this already haunted area.

Haunted Research

Plans are afoot to build a whole new neighbourhood in the Bridge-Bonaventure sector of Point Saint Charles, just south of the Lachine Canal at Griffintown. Once the cradle of Canadian industrialization, the area has long since fallen into dilapidation and is now considered ripe for redevelopment.

Glossy designs depict new high-rise condominiums, trendy spaces for commerce and arts – and even an “urban beach” in the old Wellington Basin!      

However, this utopian vision is partially located on the site that hosted Montreal’s first Irish Famine Cemetery in 1847.

Known as “Black ‘47”, the year of 1847 was perhaps the most tragic in Montreal’s history. It was the year when 75,000 Irish Famine refugees landed in Montreal, a city with a population of 50,000 at the time.

Many of them were suffering from starvation, typhus and other diseases. Thousands perished on Montreal’s shores and were usually buried in mass graves. Many of these crisis cemeteries have been largely forgotten.

To learn the horrific details of this episode, please read Haunted Montreal Blog #35 – The Black Rock.

Today, the Black Rock is the only Irish Famine Cemetery currently marked on the island of Montreal.

However, new research is unveiling several other forgotten Famine cemeteries, including one at the Wellington Basin site.

Local historian Sylvain Gaudet has recently unearthed documentation verifying that well over one thousand Irish Famine Dead are still buried in mass graves in the Wellington Basin vicinity.

Further desecration will almost certainly result in more ghosts in the already haunted area.

In April 2024, Canada Lands announced big plans to redevelop the Wellington Basin and surrounding area. The federal Crown corporation wants to create a mixed-use neighbourhood by building 2,800 housing units, an artisan district and even a public beach in the old basin.

Canada Lands acquired the canal-side real estate from Transport Canada in 2010. Over the past couple of years, it has been holding public consultations that ultimately resulted in their master plan.

The Lachine Canal was built in three distinct phases, each one designed to enlarge the waterway for increasing ship sizes.

The third phase, built from 1874 to 1885, saw the deepening and enlargement of canal, including the Peel Basin, and the construction of the Wellington Basin. This project resulted in the largest industrial area in all of Canada until 1959.

Historically, the Peel and Wellington Basins have played a major role in the industrial development of Montreal and Canada.

Because of its depth and size, the Peel Basin was a “reversal” basin and was the only section of the Lachine Canal that allowed ocean vessels to move through. It was nicknamed the “terminus of Montreal.”

The original Wellington Basin was roughly 13.6 hectares in size. As the largest basin in the Lachine Canal, it mostly serviced the transshipment of coal.

Overall, this maritime hub was a staging area for ocean vessels and smaller ships destined for the Canadian interior. Busy railroad tracks also bordered the area to facilitate inter-modal transportation.

However, hundreds of bodies were exhumed during the construction of the Wellington Basin, which cut into the footprint of Montreal’s first Irish Famine cemetery.

Local historian Sylvain Gaudet has been hard at work researching the Wellington Basin site and its environs. For example, he located the La Minerve edition of July 22, 1847, which estimated the number of Irish Dead who had been buried to date as the Famine crisis raged on:

“It is calculated that there are now around 1500 to 2000 corpses buried around the sheds, a foot or two deep.”

Juxtaposing the burials in 1847 with the excavation of remains in 1876, it becomes apparent that over a thousand bodies remain buried on the Wellington Basin site.

Indeed, when workers excavated the Wellington Basin in the1870s, only 200-300 coffins were exhumed according to newspaper reports from 1876 and 1877.

Articles describe how workers and politicians dealt with exhumation of all of the bodies. The Daily Witness on August 3, 1876 wrote:

“Discovery of Human Remains. Three coffins containing human bones have been dug up by the men working at the new basin, near Wellington Bridge. It is thought those are the bodies of emigrants who died of the ship fever in 1847-48. The workmen were not a little horrified to disinter the remains of men so unexpectedly.”

An article called “Disinterring Human Remains” appeared in The Daily Witness on August 7, 1876:

“The spoon dredger employed at the canal basin occasionally brings to the surface human remains, being some of those of the unfortunate immigrants, four or five thousand in number, who died of ship fever in 1847 and 1848. It is said that these remains are sometimes kept in the vicinity of the works for some length of time before being taken away, and it is a matter many more will be exhumed before the work is concluded. It has been suggested that a trench be dug nearby and the coffins be placed in it, and covered up with disinfectants as soon as discovered.”

Spoon dredgers were a type of vessel used to maintain canals and ports. By removing the accumulated sediment from the bottom of waterways, these impressive machines kept the waters navigable.

The Daily Witness of September 7, 1876 went on to describe how the bodies were being disposed of:

“Quantities of Human Remains Discovered, A Fat Graveyard. Lately, as many as 20 coffins have been unearthed in the new Wellington Basin. Barrels have been provided in which to place the skulls and bones, while the coffins are being burned. A large box of the remains have already been interred in the Roman Catholic cemetery. Up to date, about 200 coffins have been removed.”

The Famine Dead being unearthed and desecrated found an ally in Bernard Devlin, the Member of Parliament for Montreal Center and President of the Saint Patrick’s Society at the time.

Bernard Devlin was an Irish-born lawyer, Quebec-based political figure and Canadian parliamentarian. Described as a “champion of many causes” and noted for his “splendid abilities,” Devlin was regarded as “Canada’s most prominent criminal lawyer.” His personal motto was “justice and equality to all classes and creeds, undue favor to none.”

The Daily Witness of September 21, 1876 reported that Bernard Devlin was making plans for the reburial of the Famine victims. In a column titled “THE UNKNOWN DEAD”, the newspaper stated:

“At a meeting of St. Patrick’s Society, Messrs. Devlin, M.P., Me- Grath, Dennis Coughlan, T. Doran, and F. B. McNamee were chosen as a Committee to pick out a lot in the Roman Catholic Cemetery, in which to inter the remains of those disinterred in the Lachine Canal investigation. Yesterday they selected a spot near the Fireman’s lot, and in this all the remains found will in future be placed.”

As a member of the ruling Liberal party, Devlin enjoyed close ties with Alexander MacKenzie, Canada’s second prime minister.

MacKenzie, a Scotsman, had empathy with the Irish as fellow Celtic people. As such, he fully supported Devlin’s initiative and even backed it up with financing. According to the True Witness on Friday September 22 1876:

“MR. DEVLIN, M.P., had an interview on Saturday with the Premier relative to the burial of the remains of the Irish emigrants exhumed recently in the progress of the Lachine Canal enlargement. Hon. Mr. MacKenzie ordered the purchase of a lot in the Catholic Cemetery and will pay all expenses connected with their removal and re-burial.”

The location of the plot for the transferred Famine victims is presently unknown, apart from the fact that it was purchased near the Firemen’s lot.

The plot dedicated to Montreal’s firefighters was acquired in 1867. Trustees of both the Catholic and Protestant cemeteries donated plots of 500 square feet to the Montreal Firefighters’ Benevolent Association for the burial of deceased firefighters. On May 1, 1875, matching monuments designed by Robert Reed were installed in both Catholic and Protestant cemeteries.

Regarding the Famine burial plot, it is estimated that two to three hundred corpses were transferred during construction of the Wellington Basin. The True Witness and Catholic Chronicle of June 20, 1877, made this estimation in an article called “Ship Fever Victims”:

“The coffins of the ship fever victims number some two or three hundred, and lie three tiers deep in a trench in the Wellington Basin. There are those in the neighbourhood who remember the bodies being buried during the ship fever of 1847 and 1848.”

There are many more articles that describe the horrors unearthed by workers during the construction of the Wellington Basin.

Returning to the present day, the area surrounding the Wellington Basin is considered one of the most haunted parts of the Lachine Canal – and Montreal. To learn more, please read Haunted Montreal Blog #51 – Lachine Canal.

Two paranormal phenomena tend to materialize in this area, as covered by hit TV show World’s Scariest Hauntings.

Firstly, the ghost of Mayor John Easton Mills has been spotted wandering the site around the hour of midnight.

Mayor Mills was instrumental in helping the refugees and preventing attacks against them. He contracted typhus himself during his duties and died on November 12, at the young age of 54. An elaborate funeral was held and he was declared “Montreal’s Martyr Mayor” for his heroic efforts.

His ghost is known to roam the site of Montreal’s first fever sheds, at the Wellington Basin, late at night. It is as though he is still caring for his charges in a paranormal afterlife.

Secondly, there are recordings of hundreds of orbs floating about in the air around the old basin.

In World’s Scariest Hauntings, one local resident described going into a trance when the orbs appeared to him. He felt as though the dead buried throughout the site were wailing.

Lastly, the Wellington Basin is connected to Montreal’s most infamous ghost story – the deranged tale of Headless Mary.

Dockworker Michael Flanagan was one of the prime suspects in the murder and decapitation of prostitute Mary Gallagher. She had been brutally butchered in the Griffintown flat of her best friend, Suzy Kennedy, on June 27, 1879.

During the sensational trial, prosecuted by Bernard Devlin himself, Suzy Kennedy was found guilty and sentenced to hang on December 5th of the same year. However, Michael Flanagan walked scot-free because there wasn’t enough evidence to convict him. Many of the citizens were shocked that a woman could commit such a violent crime, especially against a member of her own gender. Women in the Victorian era were often seen as delicate and defenseless creatures.

Even though Suzy Kennedy’s sentence was reduced to life in prison, one ironic fact about the story remains. On December 5th, 1879, the day Suzy Kennedy was originally to hang, Michael Flanagan fell through through the ice while working on the Wellington Basin and drowned.

At the time, many Griffintowners speculated that Mary Gallagher’s vengeful spirit had pushed him off the dock and that his drowning was the result of her ghost’s intervention.

Returning to the present, Canada Lands has made good on its promise to consult local stakeholders. Haunted Montreal has helped compile a team including historians, an anthropologist, archaeologists and other stakeholders to locate and document the forgotten cemetery.

The goal is to avoid any more desecration at the Wellington Basin site and to commemorate the remarkable history of the area, especially the Famine Dead still buried there.

To realize the project, there is a lot of work to do. With the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959, the Lachine Canal was rendered obsolete and was closed to shipping traffic. Over the years, workers filled in most of the Wellington Basin with contaminated earth, reducing its size considerably.

As such, the project will require the removal of thousands of cubic meters of toxic fill from the basin. Decontamination is estimated to cost about $77 million and the project has a 10-year timeline.

In conclusion, the Wellington Basin area is rife with tragic history and also contains what is left of Montreal’s first Irish Famine Cemetery. With over a thousand bodies still buried there, Canada Lands is wise to proceed with the utmost caution.

Company News

Haunted Montreal is proud to announce our latest haunted experience – Paranormal Investigation – Colonial Old Montreal.

Hosted by professional Ghost-hunter Dominique Desormeaux of Investigations 13, Haunted Montreal’s “Paranormal Investigation – Colonial Old Montreal” takes guests on a dark adventure into the mysterious world of ghost hunting!

With the summer in full swing, Haunted Montreal is running a whole season of ghost tours and haunted experiences! Our ghost tours include Haunted Old Montreal, Griffintown, Downtown and the mountain!

In the meantime, our Haunted Pub Crawl is offered every Sunday at 3 pm in English. For tours in French, these happen on the last Sunday of every month at 4 pm.

To learn more, see the schedule at the bottom of our home page!

Private tours for any of our experiences (including outdoor tours) can be booked at any time based on the availability of our actors. Clients can request any date, time, language and operating tour. These tours are based on the availability of our actors and start at $215 for small groups of up to 7 people.

Email info@hauntedmontreal.com to book a private tour!

You can also bring the Haunted Montreal experience to your office party, house, school or event by booking one of our Travelling Ghost Storytellers today.

Hear some of the spookiest tales from our tours and our blog told by a professional actor and storyteller. You provide the venue, we provide the stories and storyteller. Find out more and then contact info@hauntedmontreal.com

Our team also releases videos every second Saturday, in both languages, of ghost stories from the Haunted Montreal Blog. Hosted by Holly Rhiannon (in English) and Dr. Mab (in French), this initiative is sure to please ghost story fans!

Please like, subscribe and hit the bell!

In other news, if you want to send someone a haunted experience as a gift, you certainly can!

We are offering Haunted Montreal Gift Certificates through our website and redeemable via Eventbrite for any of our in-person or virtual events (no expiration date).

Finally, we have an online store for those interested in Haunted Montreal merchandise. We are selling t-shirts, magnets, sweatshirts (for those haunted fall and winter nights) and mugs with both the Haunted Montreal logo and our tour imagery. Purchases can be ordered through our online store.

Haunted Montreal has temporarily altered its blog experience due to a commitment on a big writing project! New stories at the Haunted Montreal Blog will now be offered every two months, whereas every other month will feature an update to an old story. As always, these stories and updates will be released on the 13th of every month!

Haunted Montreal would like to thank all our clients who attended a ghost walk, haunted pub crawl, paranormal investigation or virtual event!

If you enjoyed the experience, we encourage you to write a review on our Tripadvisor page, something that really helps Haunted Montreal to market its tours.

Lastly, if you would like to receive the Haunted Montreal Blog on the 13th of every month, please sign up to our mailing list.

Coming up on September 13^th: Update on the Mary Gallagher Ghost Story

The École de technologie supérieure (ETS) has been busy buying up real estate in Griffintown to expand its campus. One controversial purchase was the land on the south-east corner of William and Murray Streets – also known as the “Mary Gallagher Corner”. Indeed, her headless ghost returns to this spot every seven years on the anniversary of her death. During the design stage, Haunted Montreal pleaded with the ETS to preserve the infamous corner. It would seem that they complied. The new building going up on the site preserves the corner intact, good news for those hoping to spot Headless Mary when she returns next on June 27, 2026. To learn more, please read Haunted Montreal Blog #46 – The Ghost of Mary Gallagher.

Author:

Donovan King is a postcolonial historian, teacher, tour guide and professional actor. As the founder of Haunted Montreal, he combines his skills to create the best possible Montreal ghost stories, in both writing and theatrical performance. King holds a DEC (Professional Theatre Acting, John Abbott College), BFA (Drama-in-Education, Concordia), B.Ed (History and English Teaching, McGill), MFA (Theatre Studies, University of Calgary) and ACS (Montreal Tourist Guide, Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec). He is also a certified Montreal Destination Specialist.

Translator (into French):

Claude Chevalot holds a master’s degree in applied linguistics from McGill University. She is a writer, editor and translator. For more than 15 years, she has devoted herself almost exclusively to literary translation and to the translation of texts on current and contemporary art.

With over 300 documented ghost stories, Montreal is easily the most haunted city in Canada, if not all of North America. Haunted Montreal is dedicated to researching these paranormal tales, and the Haunted Montreal Blog unveils a newly-researched Montreal ghost story on the 13th of every month! This service is free and you can sign up to our mailing list (top, right-hand corner for desktops and at the bottom for mobile devices) if you wish to receive it every month on the 13th!

With the Hallowe’en season behind us, Haunted Montreal is moving into winter mode. We are pleased to announce that the Haunted Montreal Pub Crawl runs year round on Sunday afternoons. We are also looking for an indoor haunted location for our new Paranormal Investigation.

Lastly, our ghost walks can still be booked for private groups, including Haunted Mountain, Haunted Griffintown and Haunted Downtown, weather conditions permitting.

Our November blog examines the Lachine Canal, one of Canada’s most haunted waterways. Today the site of a linear greenspace run by Parks Canada, the canal has witnessed hundreds of drownings, especially during the era of Industrialization. It is also littered with many old factories and silos, some repurposed into condominiums, several of which are reputed to be haunted. Ghostly ships are known to ply the canal and various spirits are known to wander the banks. 

Haunted Research

The Lachine Canal is widely considered to be one of Montreal’s most haunted places. During the day, its banks are bustling with cyclists, dog-walkers, people having picnics and sunbathers, but at night it is a different story. The polluted waterway is a dark, eerie and desolate place reeking of the paranormal.

Since the canal officially opened in 1825, hundreds of people have drowned in its dark waters. These included suicides, murder victims, people who drowned while swimming and those who died during industrial accidents. The polluted banks are also peppered with old buildings, many being repurposed into condominiums, that are reputed to be haunted. Last but not least, not only are ghost ships known to ply the canal’s waters, but there are also an unknown number of bodies buried along its length. Mostly victims of the Irish Famine of 1847, these forgotten corpses of desperate refugees result in all sorts of ghosts and paranormal activity along the canal.

Historically, a portage trail existed along roughly the same trajectory of today’s canal.

Today’s Island of Montreal / Tiohtià:ke was formed approximately 10,000 years ago when an ancient sea drained away with the melting of glaciers. Geographically, the archipelago is an ideal location for trade, with 12 rivers pouring into the area. Furthermore, anyone coming into the area was forced to stop and portage canoes, given that the islands are surrounded by dangerous rapids.

As such, the ancestors of today’s Kanienʼkehá꞉ka or Mohawk First Nation established Hotsirà:ken, a city of around 5,000 people, which thrived on the island.

According to Dr. Michael Doxtater, a Mohawk Elder and specialist in Indigenous oral knowledge:

“Hotsirà:ken is an ancient ancestral place, an Indigenous place. The island was what I would call a metropolitan trade centre. The Algonquin people would come down the Ottawa River, [people] would come down from the Innu territories up the St. Lawrence and then there would be the various Iroquois linguistic groups that would converge and that was a major, major trade centre.”

The portage trail where the Lachine Canal is located today followed a small river that led to a shallow lake. Before the arrival of the French colonists, the banks of the lake were cultivated by the ancestors of today’s Kanienʼkehá꞉ka or Mohawk First Nation.

The French would later name the small river “St. Pierre” and the shallow lake “Lac aux Loutres” or “Lac à la Loutre”, which means “Otter Lake” in English.

There are several theories about the origin of the name of the lake. The otter can be likened to the beaver in French. Some say the name comes from the fact that the lake was home to a large beaver population in the 16th century. According to another story, the indigenous people who cultivated the surrounding lands gave the lake this name because of its shape. It was also said that Otter Lake symbolized the baby beaver that slept in the womb of the beaver mother, namely Tiohtià:ke or today’s Montreal island.

Starting in 1534, colonization problems began to occur on Tiohtià:ke. French explorer Jacques Cartier, on a voyage of exploration, attempted to claim the entire Indigenous territory of Turtle Island (today’s North America) for the French King, Francois I.

On July 24, 1534, Jacques Cartier planted a cross in today’s Gaspé region, a Catholic symbol that the King of France was trying to claim the territory as his own through a now-discredited Catholic doctrine called Terra Nullius.

The following year, Jacques Cartier arrived in Tiohtià:ke on October 2. He could not pass the islands due to the dangerous rapids that surrounded them. He was welcomed with great hospitality by the Mohawk villagers and leader of Hotsirà:ken. The Kanienʼkehá꞉ka hosts offered a feast of food and even provided Indigenous tour guides to Jacques Cartier so he could scale the great mountain Otsirà:ke to survey the western area beyond the rapids. It is noteworthy that Cartier promptly tried to rename Otsirà:ke as “Mount Royal” in honor of his patron.

He also mis-spelled Hotsirà:ken as “Hochelaga” in his journals.

The following day, Jacques Cartier turned his ships around and sailed back eastward up the river. Cartier’s visit would foreshadow the horrors that were about to be brought on by French colonization.

When the French began to colonize, they started in the east with settlements including Tadoussac (1599), Port Royale (1605), Quebec City (1608) and Trois-Rivières (1634).

Tiohtià:ke was seen as off-limits because it was a well-known part of the Mohawk territory and the Mohawk warriors were seen as among the fiercest in the land.

They were also part of a Confederacy of five nations known as the Haudenosaunee, which consisted of the Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga and Mohawk First Nations.

With French colonization came deadly epidemics such as smallpox that had never been encountered before by Indigenous people. The French also began forming military alliances with other First Nations who were not on friendly terms with the Haudenosaunee. With intermittent warfare and wave after wave of smallpox, the residents of Hotsirà:ken moved further south into Mohawk territory to try and avoid the diseases and warfare and to strategize.

Meanwhile, in Paris in 1639, Catholic zealots Jérôme le Royer de la Dauversière, Jean-Jacques Olier and Pierre Chevrier founded the Société de Notre-Dame de Montréal pour la conversion des Sauvages de la Nouvelle-France (The Society of Notre-Dame de Montréal for the Conversion of the Savages of New France). Le Royer claimed that God had visited him during a dream and instructed him to do so.

The religious organization founded the colony of Ville-Marie on Tiohtià:ke in1642, sparking an all-out and brutal war between the French and their allies and the Haudenosaunee, which lasted until 1701.

Today’s canal is situated on land originally “granted” by the King of France to the Sulpician Order. Beginning in 1689, attempts were made by the French Colonial government and several other groups to build a canal that would allow ships to bypass the treacherous rapids. Sulpicians François de Salignac Fénelon and Dollier de Casson spearheaded the first plans to dig the canal.

The need for of a canal to bypass the rapids was a major concern since the beginning of European colonization. In 1680, the Sulpicians had planned to build a canal between Ville-Marie and the village of Lachine to connect the various watercourses in the region.

The word “Lachine” derives from French “la Chine” (China), and was named in 1667, apparently in mockery of its then owner Robert Cavelier de La Salle. He was known to explore the interior of the continent in an effort to find a passage to Asia. When he returned without success, he and his men were derisively named “les Chinois” (the Chinese). The name was adopted when the parish of Saints-Anges-de-la-Chine was created in 1678, with the name Lachine appearing on subsequent maps for both the rapids and the village.

The canal, which would have been the first in North America, was never completed due to a lack of funding, although several large sections were dug starting in 1689.

Following the British Conquest of 1760, there was a renewed interest in digging the canal. In 1821, a budget was prepared and 200 Irish navies from Griffintown were hired to dig the project. 

After four years later of back-breaking labour, the canal was completed and opened to shipping traffic.

It wasn’t long before the canal needed to be deepened to allow heavier ships to pass through and to harness hydraulic power for the industries located on its banks. Work began in 1843, but trouble started immediately when construction work was privatized and worker’s received a wage cut of a shilling a day, almost 30% of their salary! This sparked the first strike in Canadian history, as workers stopped digging and demanded a wage increase, at both the Lachine and Beauhornois canals. 

At Beauhornois, authorities were alarmed and 50 soldiers from the 74th Regiment, under Major Campbell, were brought in. Magistrate Laviolette read the Riot Act, and when the workers refused to disperse, he yelled out: “Major Campbell, fire!” The soldiers raised their muskets and fired into the crowd of navies, causing a scene of panic. At least 6 workers were killed by bullets, 4 of them shot in the back as they fled. 

A priest on the scene named Father Falvey cursed the magistrate, calling him a coward and murderer. However, an inquiry later cleared the government, declaring it to be a case of “justifiable homicide”. It was a dark moment in the canal system’s history.

By 1850, factories were springing along the canal’s banks. With the enlargement of the Lachine Canal and its plentiful hydraulic power, huge foundries, factories, and metal works were built, their smokestacks spewing out noxious, black clouds. Giant ships would frequently dock to load and unload cargo and the area was soon known as the Canada’s cradle of industrialization.  

Residents of working-class neighborhoods like Griffintown were put to work in the factories, often for 14 hours per day, 6 days a week, in grueling conditions. Women and children, some as young as 6 years old, earned a lot less than a man for the exact same job. 

With no environmental standards in place, the Lachine Canal and its banks were soon heavily polluted with dangerous chemicals and metals such as chromium, lead, zinc, copper and mercury. 

This continued until around the 1950s, when the expansion of the port and opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway in 1959, on the other side of the river, made the Lachine Canal obsolete.

The factories began closing up shop and over 20,000 people were put out of work. The neighborhood began dying as people moved away in search of better prospects. 

The canal was neglected, and at one point, the entrance was used as a dump for debris from the Expo 67′ Metro construction, closing it to shipping. Eventually it was re-excavated and Parks Canada took over in 2002, transforming the canal into a linear park with a bike path.

As for the pollution, they decided to simply not disturb the contaminated sediments at the bottom of the canal. The pollution is still down there, a twisted reminder of the canal’s deranged history.

Today, the canal has ghosts and hauntings all along its 14.5 km trajectory, both in the dark waters and along the shoreline, including in many of the old buildings.

Starting in the water itself, there are reports of ghost ships plying the waterway and the spirits of the dozens of people who drowned in the canal. Coolopolis author Kristian Gravenor researched some of these drownings in his blog:

“The waters have not spared children or elderly women, as people of all types breathed their last breaths before their bodies were fished out in macabre scenes all too familiar to city-dwellers. Many were suicides, others murder victims and many others were people who just drowned after swimming or slipping in fully-clothed.”  

Former Griffintown resident Denis Delaney described children swimming in the canal and drowning when boats suddenly shifted against the banks, forcing the doomed kids under the water.

Gravenor describes the Lachine Canal as a “watery graveyard” and “Montreal’s spookiest place.” The spirits of the drowned can sometimes be heard in the waters and manifest themselves as unusual splashes, waters thrashing about for no reason and gurgling noises emanating from the depths of the canal.

There were also countless industrial accidents along the Lachine Canal, which resulted in hauntings.

For example, the spirit of a nervous young boy wearing a black suit has been spotted on several occasions on the Swing Bridge. He appears to be running across the length of the bridge before leaping and disappearing into thin air.

There is a theory as to who this ghost might be. At around 9 pm on the evening of Tuesday, September 17, 1908, a little boy was attempting to cross the Lachine Canal from the south side by using the Swing Bridge. He was wearing a black suit with knee-high pants. The bridge was designed to swing 90 degrees to allow canal boats through, meaning cars and pedestrians had to wait for a ship to pass before the bridge swung back into place.

When the boy arrived on the south side, the bridge began to swing to allow a boat to pass. He jumped on the bridge to catch a ride across the canal. The bridge-keeper didn’t notice, as many pedestrians in a hurry would jump on the bridge as it swung. They had to wait in the middle as a ship passed. Once the ship was through, the bridge began swinging back into its regular position, connecting both sides of Wellington Street.

Unfortunately, the boy attempted to jump off on the Griffintown side before the bridge had swung fully into place and instead of landing on the street, he fell between the abutment and the bridge. He was crushed before the bridge-keeper could cut the electricity to the structure. 

When the bridge-keeper realized what had happened, he swung the bridge back out again and people pulled up the mangled body of a teenage boy with brown hair of about 13 years old. In his suit pocket was a Montreal Swimming Club Card bearing the named Arthur Carr. An ambulance brought him to the General Hospital but the surgeon on duty noted that the boy was killed instantly when crushed by the Wellington Swing Bridge. The boy was placed in the morgue, but nobody claimed his body. Instead, it was sent to Anatomy.

The most prominent theory about the haunting is that young Arthur Carr’s ghost remained after the tragic accident that killed him. He was probably in a hurry to get home to the Griff after attending some sort of church function on the other side in Point Saint Charles, which may be why he was so well-dressed. Sometimes when a person is killed suddenly, their ghost returns but is not aware that they are actually dead. There is speculation that the ghost of the boy appears because he is still trying to return to his family home in the Griff after all these years.

Running below the rusting Swing Bridge is the decrepit and abandoned Wellington Tunnel, another haunted site. Desolate and foreboding, crumbling and graffiti-scrawled, the tunnel is strewn with garbage and its hidden entrance is sealed off with concrete blocks and prison-like iron bars. The place feels extremely creepy and dangerous and is known to house several ghosts, including one of a man carrying a bucket of blood. It was covered in the #7 Haunted Montreal Blog.

As for the buildings, one of the most famous hauntings occurred in the Redpath Sugar Refinery when it was abandoned and used as shelter by homeless people. According to the Narcity Blog:

“The bike path that runs along it passes several haunted buildings, like the former Redpath factory, for example. A spirit would wander with the mission of dislodging the homeless people squatting the place by chilling the air and releasing an abominable stench.”

Today, the Redpath is the site of luxury condominiums and it is unknown if these paranormal activities continue for the more affluent residents who live there now.

Other buildings that are reputed to be haunted include Silo #5, the Belding Paul & Co. Limited Buildings, the Old Malt Factory and the Fur Trade Museum in Lachine.

Going further back in time, the Lachine Canal was also hard hit by the Irish Famine of 1847, resulting in many more ghosts and paranormal activities. One of these includes a regiment of ghostly British Redcoats, who have been spotted marching along the banks in military unison with bayonets in the air.

In the summer of 1847, Montreal was a city of 50,000 people. Due to the famine exacerbated by British colonial inaction, Montreal was completely overwhelmed by 75,000 Irish refugees, most of whom made the crossing on “coffin ships”. Many were suffering from starvation and typhus, a highly contagious disease.

Due to a shortage of canal boats, many of the refugees chose to walk the canal path to Lachine. According to reports, many of them died on the banks of the canal and were buried on the spot in unmarked graves.

Despite aid from various religious institutions and Mayor John Easton Mills himself, the death toll that year was staggering: in addition to the 6,000 Irish victims, almost 1000 Montreal residents, at least 8 Catholic priests, thirteen nuns, and seven Anglican clergymen also perished from typhus.

In early November, the Mayor dropped out of sight and citizens began to wonder what had happened to him. It turns out that Mayor Mills contracted typhus himself during his duties. According to his doctor, he never issued a word of complaint about the pain or his misfortune. He died on November 12, at the young age of 54. An elaborate funeral was held and he was declared “Montreal’s Martyr Mayor” for his heroic efforts.

His ghost is known to wander the site of Montreal’s first fever sheds, at the Wellington Basin on the south side of the canal, late at night. It is as though he is still caring for his charges in a paranormal afterlife.

Thousands of orbs have also been photographed at this site, sometimes floating about in the air. One local resident went into a trance and the orbs appeared to him.

He felt as though the dead were wailing, perhaps a likely paranormal occurrence given that the site also contains the first Irish Famine cemetery, which is presently not marked in any way.

The full horrors of the impact of the Irish Famine are covered in the #35 Haunted Montreal Blog.

In conclusion, the Lachine Canal is indeed a very haunted waterway. Wandering its eerie banks at night is a spooky experience, one not recommended for the faint of heart. It’s advisable to go in pairs or a group, because you never know what might be luring in the dark waters, the old factories or the haunted shoreline of the Lachine Canal!

Company News

Haunted Montreal is has concluded the Hallowe’en Season and is moving into winter mode! For this first time ever, we will be operating year-round with our award-winning Haunted Pub Crawl, every Sunday at 3 pm in English and 4 pm in French.

Private tours are also available, weather permitting, for Haunted Mountain, Haunted Griffintown, Haunted Downtown, the Haunted Pub Crawl and our new Paranormal Investigation into the old Saint-Antoine Cemetery.

Haunted Montreal has also launched our first promotional video ever! Please share it if you like it!

We are also proud to announce that I, Donovan King, have been accredited as a “Montreal Destination Specialist” by Tourisme Montréal. I will use these skills to improve our tours and to continue to develop new experiences as we put Montreal on the map as Canada’s most haunted destination.

Haunted Montreal would like to thank all of our clients who attended a ghost walk, haunted pub crawl or paranormal investigation during the 2019 season! If you enjoyed the experience, we encourage you to write a review on our Tripadvisor page, something that helps Haunted Montreal to market its tours. Lastly, if you would like to receive the Haunted Montreal Blog on the 13th of every month, please sign up to our mailing list.

Coming up on December 13: Hôpital de la Miséricorde

The former Hôpital de la Miséricorde is just one of many now-vacant hospital complexes in Montreal, in the wake of decisions to centralize hospital services. During its sordid past, thousands of orphans were falsely diagnosed with mental illnesses and single mothers were housed in hostile conditions within the walls of the former “Hospital of Mercy”. Today, the building is abandoned by the living – but certainly not by the dead! Considered a paranormal hotspot by experts, there are many stories of disembodied children’s voices crying, sounds of clanging, strapping and other abuse, not to mention the appartitions of angry nuns and a fearful young mother.

Donovan King is a postcolonial historian, teacher, tour guide and professional actor. As the founder of Haunted Montreal, he combines his skills to create the best possible Montreal ghost stories, in both writing and theatrical performance. King holds a DEC (Professional Theatre Acting, John Abbott College), BFA (Drama-in-Education, Concordia), B.Ed (History and English Teaching, McGill), MFA (Theatre Studies, University of Calgary) and ACS (Montreal Tourist Guide, Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec). He is also a certified Montreal Destination Specialist.

Haunted Research

Hidden away just off Wellington Street, the decrepit and abandoned Wellington Tunnel is desolate and foreboding. Crumbling and graffiti-scrawled, the tunnel is strewn with garbage and its hidden entrance is sealed off with concrete blocks and prison-like iron bars. The place feels extremely creepy and dangerous.

The Wellington Tunnel was constructed in 1932 because the Swing Bridge from 1893 could no longer handle the heavy increase in now-motorized car traffic. The tunnel was constructed with 4 passages: two for cars, one for streetcars and one for pedestrians. Sometimes water flooded the passageways, making it dangerous, especially for the electric streetcars. On other occasions locals would dump garbage inside, creating obstacles for traffic. The Wellington Tunnel was not well-liked, with locals complaining about nasty fumes, horrible stenches and strange, foreboding noises when passing through it.

After engineers detected dangerous structural problems in 1994, the Wellington Tunnel was closed and ultimately abandoned. It was replaced it with the current Wellington Bridge. The tunnel’s southern end was blocked off and its entrance buried, but the northern entrance can still be visited.

Today the tunnel is used by people who know about its secret entrance. Homeless people sometimes use it for shelter and occasionally artists host clandestine vernissages (art exhibitions) and illegal rave parties. While the tunnel beneath the Lachine Canal is definitely spacious, it is also rumoured to be haunted, according to many of its users.

Firstly, there are reports of a growling noise that emanates from within the darkness of the tunnel. According to one man who was contemplating sleeping rough in the tunnel, he heard what sounded like a large animal growling menacingly at him, so he decided to abandon his plan.

In another instance, a new condo owner who was walking her poodle discovered the tunnel’s entrance accidentally. Curious, she and her dog approached the bars that seal the tunnel to have a peek inside. Her poodle appeared suddenly nervous and began to whine. They then heard an animalistic growling noise from within the tunnel, prompting her tiny dog to go berserk and start howling. Disturbed, she dragged her upset poodle away, vowing never to return. Whether the growling noise is caused by paranormal activity or some sort of creature who has taken up residence in the tunnel or is a matter of speculation.

Secondly, a former resident of Griffintown who used to live across the street from the Wellington Tunnel reports the ghost of a man whose nickname was “Bucket of Blood” when he was alive. She recalls him traversing the tunnel from Point St. Charles to the Griff every evening after his shift at a slaughterhouse, always carrying a bucket of pig’s blood for his wife to make blood pudding. Despite his retirement and eventual death, his spirit continued to haunt the tunnel and was witnessed on many occasions, still carrying a bucket of blood.

Thirdly, the phantom of a nervous young boy wearing a black suit with his pants cut off at the knee has been spotted on several occasions in the vicinity. Reports have placed him inside the abandoned Wellington Tunnel, on the shores of the canal, and on the Swing Bridge, located on an island in the middle of the waters. The ghostly boy appears to be anxious about something, as though he is late or in a rush. Usually, when he is spotted, he begins running away and disappears into thin air moments later.

The ghost of the little boy wearing a suit seems out of place and out of time amongst the abandoned industrial infrastructure. However, back in the old days when the Griff was Canada’s most notorious shantytown, it was not uncommon to see children wearing suits. In fact, formal ware was practically a requirement for church-going and religious functions during the days when Griffintown was booming and locals worshipped at the now-demolished St. Ann’s Church.

Research has indicated that at around 9 pm on the evening of Tuesday, September 17, 1908, a little boy was attempting to cross the Lachine Canal from the south side by using the Swing Bridge. He was wearing a black suit with knee-high pants. The bridge was designed to swing 90 degrees to allow canal boats through, meaning cars and pedestrians had to wait for a ship to pass before the bridge swung back into place. When the boy arrived on the south side, the bridge began to swing to allow a boat to pass. He jumped on the bridge to catch a ride across the canal. The bridge-keeper didn’t notice, as many pedestrians in a hurry would hop on the bridge as it began swinging to save time. They had to wait in the middle as a ship passed, and once it was through, the bridge began swinging back into its regular position, connecting both sides of Wellington Street.

Unfortunately, the boy attempted to jump off on the Griffintown side before the bridge had fully swung into place. Instead of landing on the street, he fell between the abutment and the bridge and was crushed to death before the bridge-keeper could cut the electricity to the structure.

When the bridge-keeper realized what had happened, he swung the bridge back out again and people pulled up the mangled body of a teenage boy with brown hair of about 13 years old. He was wearing a suit and in his pocket was a Montreal Swimming Club Card bearing the named Arthur Carr. An ambulance brought him to the General Hospital but the surgeon on duty noted that the boy was killed instantly when crushed by the Wellington Swing Bridge. The dead boy was placed in the morgue, but nobody claimed his mangled corpse.

The most prominent theory about the haunting is that young Arthur Carr’s ghost remained after the tragic accident that killed him so suddenly. He was probably in a hurry to get home to the Griff after attending some sort of church function on the other side in Point Saint Charles, which may be why he was so well-dressed. Sometimes when a person is killed suddenly, their ghost returns but is not aware that they are actually dead.

As such, there is speculation that this is the case with the confused phantom of the boy. Perhaps the reason he is seen sometimes in the tunnel is that he is still trying to cross the canal after his ill-fated accident in 1908.

Company News

Haunted Montreal would like to thank all of our clients who attended the new Haunted Griffintown Ghost Walk this Hallowe’en Season. We did a total of eight tours and seven of them sold out. We also had to turn away over 100 clients due to popular demand, meaning the company will be expanding for next year.

Haunted Montreal’s 2015 public season of ghost walks is now over, but private bookings for groups of 10+ are still available for all of our tours. For more information or to see which times and dates are available, please contact info@hauntedmontreal.com.

Over the winter months, Haunted Montreal plans to expand for the 2016 season. Our goals are to reconfigure our website in order to improve it, to create a new box office system, to hire more actors and to have all of our tours available in both English and French. The public season should start again in May, 2016.

For clients who attended a ghost walk, we invite you to write a review on our Tripadvisor page, something that is very helpful for Haunted Montreal in promoting its tours.

For those reading the blog who want to stay updated and receive a new Montreal ghost story on the 13th of every month, please sign up to our mailing list.

Coming up on December 13: Haunted Old Pointe Claire Hotel
In the heart of Pointe Claire Village sits a rambling old structure, once a hotel, that is rumored to be haunted by a shadowy figure who terrifies people on the building’s creepy third floor. A hotel has stood on the corner of Lakeshore Boulevard and Avenue Ste Anne since the 1880s, just a stone’s throw away from the historic Saint-Joachim Church. The original inn was destroyed after a fire ravaged half of the village in 1900, and the hotel was promptly rebuilt. The Pointe Claire Hotel changed hands many times over the years and was often renamed after the proprietor, such as Charlebois, Rickner or Chénier. The hotel business dried up in the 1960s and the building has housed a series of drinking establishments and restaurants ever since, including the legendary Pioneer, followed by Clyde’s and most recently Le Pionnier. Bar staff who had to go to the office on the ominous third floor to deposit the evening’s accounts have reported a shadowy apparition that lurks about as well as feelings of being closely watched and occasionally touched by an unseen hand. While nobody is certain who or what is haunting the old Pointe Claire Hotel, there is speculation the haunting is related to the nearby church – and unmarked cemetery!

Donovan King is a historian, teacher and professional actor. As the founder of Haunted Montreal, he combines his skills to create the best possible Montreal ghost stories, in both writing and theatrical performance. King holds a DEC (Professional Theatre Acting, John Abbot College), BFA (Drama-in-Education, Concordia), B.Ed (History and English Teaching, McGill) and MFA (Theatre Studies, University of Calgary).