Photo: Maxime Laterreur (CC BY 4.0)
A self-guided audio walking tour along the Lachine Canal, about seven kilometres west on a flat, shared path from Lock 1 in the Old Port to the Côte-Saint-Paul Lock. It starts where the canal, begun on July 17, 1821 to bypass the Lachine Rapids, meets the St. Lawrence, beside Silo No. 5, the grain elevator that closed in 1994. At the Peel Basin, where ocean vessels turned and unloaded, the Farine Five Roses sign stands above the old flour docks. In Griffintown the walk passes the New City Gas works, whose oldest building dates from 1859, the park on the site of the Horse Palace stable of 1862, demolished in 2017, and the foundation walls of St. Ann's Church, built in 1854 for the Irish community and demolished in 1970. Past the filled Basin 4 at the Bassin-à-Bois and the Redpath sugar refinery, founded in 1854, it reaches the Saint-Gabriel Lock, where the held water once also powered the industries beside it. Then come the Belding Corticelli silk mill, now lofts, the Nordelec building of Northern Electric, the Art Deco Marché Atwater of 1932–1933, the violet terracotta silos of Canada Malting and, at the end, the Côte-Saint-Paul Lock. The canal closed to commercial navigation in 1970 and reopened for pleasure craft in 2002.
14 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 72 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
Lock 1 and the Canal Entrance, Silo No. 5, Peel Basin and the Five Roses Mill, New City Gas works, Griffintown Horse Palace.
Site of St. Ann's Church, Bassin-à-Bois and the Filled Basins, Redpath sugar refinery.
Saint-Gabriel Lock, Belding Corticelli Silk Mill, Northern Electric building, Atwater Market, Canada Malting silos, Côte-Saint-Paul Lock.
The canal's entrance from the St. Lawrence, begun in 1821 to bypass the Lachine Rapids, closed to commercial navigation in 1970 and reopened for pleasure craft in 2002.
The grain elevator on Pointe-du-Moulin where trains ran through the silo and floating elevators loaded transatlantic ships; it closed in 1994.
The basin where ocean vessels turned and unloaded, under the scaffold sign whose word Flour came down in 1977.
Foundation walls and rows of benches facing the former altar of the 1854 church of Griffintown's Irish, demolished in 1970.
A silk mill of 1884 that ran on water power until 1914, made nylon stockings in the Second World War and now holds 79 lofts.
The Art Deco market of 1932–1933 by Ludger and Paul-Marie Lemieux, built as a public-works employment program and still a year-round market.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 14 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 14 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in The Lachine Canal — Locks, Mills and the Industrial Southwest, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
14 narration points, including Silo No. 5, Peel Basin and the Five Roses Mill, Redpath sugar refinery, Saint-Gabriel Lock and Atwater Market. That is about 22 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~3 hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 14 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.