From the GAzette 47 years ago,the Lasalle Explosion of March 1st 1965

(From The Gazette, March 2, )

The two apartment blocks which adjoined the one in which 24 persons, including 14 children, lost their lives in yesterday's disastrous explosion at suburban LaSalle Heights, were ordered evacuated late last night.

The evacuation order was issued by LaSalle mayor, Dr. Lionel Boyer.

Mrs. Marguerite Wilson, of the Red Cross, said 160 blankets were rushed late last night to the suburb's Henri Foret school, 1000 Tresor Cashe St., where the occupants of the badly damaged dwellings were being sheltered.

At 10 p.m. yesterday Coroner Marcel Trahan issued the following names of person killed in the blast:

--Sharon Peard, 9, and a brother, Kevin, 2, both of 0365 Bergevin, Apt. 3.

--Brenda Czopco, 5, and a sister, Johanne, 7, both of 0365 Bergevin, Apt. 5.

--Marielle Quesnel, 33, 0367 Bergevin, Apt 5.

--Gail Sylvia, 10, address not yet determined.

--James Dyer, 35, a roomer at the Czopco apartment.

--Mrs. Nancy McGuigan, a daughter, 10, and a son, Gordon, 12, of 0365 Bergevin, Apt. 1.

--Jean Marc Thibeault, 51, and Mrs. Thibeault, 44, of 0365 Bergevin, Apt. 2.

--Anne-Marie Rahanck, 2, and a sister, Vera, 8, of 0367 Bergevin, Apt. 1.

--Mrs. Enna Arsenault, 50. --Sandra Dawson, 3.

--Mrs. Louise Bischoff, 44.

Both the Rahanck children died after being brought to St. Joseph's Hospital in Lachine.

Identification of other victims was expected early this morning.

Mayor Boyer, addressing a press conference in the temporary morgue at his city's civic centre two miles from the scene of the blast, said he asked the Quebec Natural Gas Corporation to make a complete check of heating systems in the sprawling, 24-building apartment development owned by LaSalle Heights "to prevent any similar occurrences."

He said the company apparently had been making only once-yearly checks and should be doing so every month. Immediately after the explosion, the company cut off the gas supply to 95 other apartment units in four buildings damaged in the blast.

People living in them had already moved out or were being asked to on a temporary basis.

Gas inspectors are provided by the Quebec Gas and Electricity Board. Quebec Natural Gas Corporation, through its public relations director, issued a flat "no comment" when questioned regarding the explosion at 11 p.m. yesterday.

Marcel Dame, assistant provincial director for Civil Defence, said gas "will not be turned back on until those responsible feel it is safe to do so." Mobile public address systems cruised the area asking residents to leave their homes and telling them of accommodation arranged in downtown hotels.

Preliminary autopsies have already been performed on some of the bodies removed from the disaster. It is feared some of the five persons still reported missing late last night had perished in the blast.

Rescue workers said fragments of bodies were being found in the crater.

Jacques Cartier Bridge Gets New Shocks

Here’s your chance to see the underbelly of the Jacques Cartier Bridge.

Last week, you may have heard that the Jacques Cartier was being closed overnight and seen the scaffolding around piers that hold up a bridge ramp at the northwest corner of Ste. Catherine St. and De Lorimier Ave.

Workers removed the 82-year-old hunk of steel (in the photo above) that helps hold up a 336-tonne section of the bridge. They were making way for a new shock absorber for the span.

Workers were replacing a part of the structure known as a bearing device. It sits at the top of a pier and transfers the load from the deck to the piers.

In this case, the bearing device is of a type that allows for slight movements in the bridge’s superstructure. It acts as a sort of shock absorber for the bridge, absorbing movements due to traffic and changes in temperature, says Jean-Vincent Lacroix of the Jacques Cartier and Champlain Bridges Inc.

The devices being replaced were installed more than 20 years ago. They are rusty and inspections indicate they should be replaced, Lacroix said. These are not emergency repairs, he added. They’re part of regular maintenance.

I went up to watch some of the work on Feb. 23.

The federal bridge agency is replacing bearing devices on 12 sections of the bridgebetween February and June this year. It’s part of a five-month, $3.5-million renovation that will require the bridge to be completely closed for about 15 brief overnight periods over the next four months.

Here’s how you change a bearing device:

1) Install scaffolding under and around two piers (one on either side of the bridge) where the bearing devices will be replaced.

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2) Install support beams next to and attached to the piers in question.

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3) Close the bridge to traffic between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. Use a powerful hydraulic jack to lift a 336-tonne section of the bridge slightly (up to 10 millimetres).

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4) Reopen bridge to traffic. Motorists won’t notice the fact that part of the bridge is slightly askew. 

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5) Cut out and remove the top of the pier. In this case, most of the section removed dates from the bridge’s opening in 1930 (the green part in the photo below), but the rusty bearing device on top of it had been replaced in 1980. All that rust made it less effective.

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6) Install thick new steel plates and bolt them to the structure. The top of the pier has to be removed because of these new plates. The plates will make it easier to replace the bearing device when it’s time is up in about 25 years. Thanks to these plates, next time, they won’t have to install the support beams in Step 2.

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7) Install the new bearing device between the steel plates.

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8)  Close the bridge to traffic again from 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. and lower the bridge deck back to its normal location.

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9) Reopen the bridge.

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10) Return in about 2037 to replace the bearing device again.

   ..............................So there you have replacing a shock on the JC Bridge , Cheers ! HF&RV - Les

Sit Back & We Will drive Around Montreal & Area........( & There's No Charge)

Ok sit back & take a trip around Montreal  the ride starts in the 1st comment box. 

Winter Blues Head for the Beach

Circle mid-June on your calendar.

That’s when Montreal gets its “urban beach” at the Old Port, Metropolitan News has learned.

I braved the snow and the cold and checked out the beach-to-be on Thursday.

My mission was to explore the Old Port’s Clock Tower Pier, where, as of this summer, Montrealers will be able to forget about winter.

When it was announced last year, the beach was panned by some because no swimming will be allowed.

There’ll be sand, Adirondack chairs, a boardwalk, a bar and showers and mist stations to cool off. Work on it started in the fall, including the installation of large blue parasols now covered in snow in ice.

The Plage urbaine au Vieux-Port will open in mid-June and run until Labour Day, Julie Mailhot, a spokesperson for the Quais du Vieux-Port, told me.

It will not be free but the entry fee has not been set yet, Mailhot said..

I poked around the Quais du Vieux-Port website and found a document (PDF)suggesting a season pass for a family will cost $58 plus taxes.

Claude Benoît, president of the Old Port of Montreal Corp., said in a speech last Maythat the federal agency wants to spend $180 million revamping the Old Port by 2017, the year Canada celebrates its 150th birthday and Montreal turns 375. The agency is spending $3 million on the beach and another $400,000 for “reception and service pavilions” for the beach.

Below are some photos from Claude Cormier + Associés Inc., the urban design company that developed the beach project. (More on the project, including more photos, on this page of Claude Cormier’s site).

In winter, the Quai de l’horloge is a nice (though desolate) place for a walk on a cold, snowy day, with views of the icy St. Lawrence River, the Jacques Cartier Bridge, Old Montreal and the 1920s cold- storage facility turned luxury condo complex at 1000 de la Commune St.

I took a few panorama photos on Thursday (here and here and here).

:Below is a photo, by The Gazette’s Pierre Obendrauf, of the Clock Tower showing off the new lighting unveiled in December. Completed in 1922, the clock tower is a memorial to merchant seamen who died during World War I.

- Andy Riga