the champlain sea, otter lake, foxes and coyotes
July 1, 2007 by andyriga
After my article about the falaise ran in The Gazette, I got an email from John Fretz, who has done some very interesting research into the St. Pierre River (the pdf is here, on the Green Coalition website).
Fretz helped fill in a few of the gaps in my falaise research:
* Fossils and calcium deposits confirm the falaise is a geological formation dating back to the Champlain Sea, he writes.
* Otter Lake definately graced the location of the Turcot interchange. ”It exists on early maps of the city easily available at Westmount Library,” Fretz says. “In fact, there is a park of that name in French at the bottom of Coursol Avenue (Lansdowne), far away from the Turcot. It relates to the St. Pierre River. The last tributary of that stream flows through Meadowbrook Golf Course.”
* In the story, I mentioned I didn’t meet much wildlife. “Try early morning, or late afternoon,” he writes. “Foxes and coyotes have been spotted in the Glen Yards before the devastation.”
Here is an article that got me started - and believing that Otter Lake was located more near the interchange, and perhaps a huge part of Turcot yards, rather than being a little thing deeper east into Saint Henri.
cbed.geog.mcgill.ca/AtlasPDFs/SustainabilityRootedInHeritage.pdf
Hope the link works it was timing out for me tonight.
Try the HTML version. It doesn’t include the maps and graphics but you can read the paper.