1. The Development of Trade and Functions, 1644-1970

The port of Montreal has played a dominant role in the growth and development of the city. As a function, the cargoes it handles have generated significant economic benefits for the city. As a land use, the morphology of the port has helped shaped the character of adjacent urban neighborhoods. In the following section the port is examined in the context of the concepts and processes discussed in this chapter. Historical in approach, the discussion is divided into two main parts, that dealing with the port from its foundation to the late 1960's, and the transformations that have occurred since.

Despite its location 1,600 km from the ocean, Montreal has developed as an important seaport. The Lachine rapids, the first major obstacle encountered on the St Lawrence River encountered by the early French explorers, made Montreal the head of navigation. Goods originating from or destined for the interior of the St. Lawrence drainage basin and beyond had to be transferred at Montreal to ocean-going ships. From the 1640's until 1820 the main trade was furs, which did not require much in the way of harbor facilities. However, with the loss of the fur trade in 1821, Montreal merchants sought other trade opportunities, the most evident being the trade of the newly developing areas of Upper Canada and later the Prairies. The port began to emerge as an important importer of manufactured goods and immigrants destined for Central and Western Canada, and as the port of export of the raw materials being produced in these regions, principally grain. By the 1920's Montreal was the largest grain handling port in the world. To the three main types of trade up to the 1880's, grain, general cargo (manufactured goods), and passengers were subsequently added other dry bulk shipments (coal and minerals), and, oil.

The hinterland of Montreal extended over much of central and western Canada, linked by the canal system established on the St. Lawrence, and by the Canadian railways that were focused on Montreal. This was a seasonal hinterland, however. The port was closed by ice from mid-December to April, and some of its trade was diverted to the Maritimes' ports of Halifax and Saint John. Other trade was temporarily suspended, with industries having to stockpile over the winter months. Unlike many other ports of the world, which tend to be specialized in a narrow range of commodities and with severe imbalances between imports and exports, Montreal was marked by a broad range of functions, and with a trade flow that was remarkably balanced between imports and exports.

The growth of trade through the port of Montreal had a profound effect on the economy of the city. Many industries were established to process the goods crossing the quays of the port: flour milling, oil refining, sugar refining, textiles; other industries were established as a result of all the transport activity: ship repair, rope and sail manufacturers, railway manufacturing and repair; and, because of the growing numbers of immigrants entering Canada through Montreal, many stayed there producing the large labor market that drew many of Montreal's early major industries: clothing, leather (Slack et al 1994). The port also led to the establishment of an important service industry (Slack 1988). Tulchinsky (1977) has demonstrated the significance of the 'River Barons', through whose wealth accumulation in port-related trade, laid the base of Montreal's rise as the banking, industrial and commercial metropolis of Canada in the Nineteenth Century.

2. The Physical Development of the Port of Montreal

The fur trade, because of the nature of the commodity itself, did not require any port infrastructure, the furs being transferred from canoes to ships tied up on the river bank. The loss of this trade and the development of substitutes, however, required more formal facilities. A series of lateral quays parallel to the shore were built in the 1820's, as in the Anyport model. In the late Nineteenth Century the growth of trade and the increased size of ships necessitated more elaborate facilities, in particular the extension of finger piers from the shore out into deep water. These piers allowed many ships to tie up in a short space of shoreline. Grain elevators and multi-story cargo sheds were also built on or adjacent to the piers.

By 1900, the port of Montreal was an intense focus of activity adjacent to the old city. Increasingly, the neighboring urban areas became influenced by the port. People began to move out of Old Montreal, and in the 1890's retailing relocated on Ste Catherine Street, a move that anticipated the shift of office functions that occurred in the 1960's. By then Old Montreal was a true sailor town adjacent to the waterfront, with warehouses, seamen's hostels, bars and other manifestations of urban blight.

The construction and subsequent enlargements of the Lachine Canal, not only gave access to the port for canal vessels linking the Great Lakes, but also served as a major concentration of early industrialization.

Although the Upper Harbour was the focus of activity, traffic growth led to the expansion of lateral quays down river, as the port increasingly pre-empted river shoreline. Six oil refineries were ultimately built on greenfield sites, beyond the urbanised zone, pulling the port further and further away from its original core.

By 1971, the facilities are strung out down river from the still active Upper Harbor. The various functional zones have been identified. It is significant that even as late as this, many of the port areas were not specialized. For example, the Upper Harbor had three grain elevators, but for the most part the berths served a range of functions, including grain shipment. It was here that passengers alighted, and the berths handled a wide range of other cargoes. Because ships spent a long time in port, the berths remained occupied for many days, and hence photographs usually show dozens of ships in port at one time.

3. The Modern Port, 1970 and Beyond

By 1970 a remarkable transformation of port trade was under way. Grain, the mainstay of Montreal's port activity for 150 years was about to diminish. Markets for Canadian grain were shifting to the Pacific, and rail shipments to western ports were eating into eastern ports' hinterlands. During the 1970's there occurred the great oil shock, when international oil prices increased enormously. Canada adopted a National Energy Policy of keeping domestic crude prices well below those on the international market. Montreal's refineries, dependent on foreign imports, were severely disadvantaged, and subsequently four of the six refineries closed down, thereby impacting greatly on port traffic. Passenger traffic declined greatly. The trans-Atlantic passenger services maintained by Canadian Pacific and Cunard were terminated due to competition from jet aircraft. In these ways the fundamental character of Montreal's traffic was changed.

The greatest change, however, came through containerization. Montreal was the first Canadian port to establish a dedicated container service in 1967. By the 1970's the conversion to containers proceeded very rapidly, so that by the 1990's most of the port's general cargo traffic had been containerized, and the port was the largest container port in Canada, and the fourth largest on the East Coast of North America. Montreal is unique among container ports in that the ships do not have an opportunity to pick up or drop off cargoes en route, there being no market of sufficient magnitude on the St. Lawrence to warrant this. A shortage of cargo in one port can be made up by calling elsewhere on other maritime ranges. This is a double edged sword, however. Inter-port competition may bring about the demise of one or more ports on these maritime ranges (for the case of the port of Baltimore see Starr 1991). Montreal is thus protected to a certain degree. Montreal has be en able to exploit its geographical position closer to interior markets of Canada and the U.S. than any competing port. The penetration of the U.S. Mid-West is a striking feature of Montreal's container hinterland. Its success is based upon efficient and integrated rail connections with interior markets.

Although bulk cargoes still dominate Montreal's cargo traffic in terms of tonnages, the relative positions of bulk traffic have shifted, with general cargo (containers) assuming a much more important role than before.

The functional changes have had a major impact on internal layout. The impacts of these changes in port land on neighboring urban areas have been significant. Most striking have been the transformations in Old Montreal. By the 1960's the waterfront area was increasingly derelict and blighted, but with urban policies designed to renovate Old Montreal itself, along with the removal of port activities from the Upper Harbor, have made this a vibrant neighborhood again, with a growing commercial and residential character.

4. Challenges for the Port of Montreal

The port's future seems increasingly linked with containers. Its present success is based on the penetration of Mid-West markets. While the competition with New York and other U.S. ports has been successful due to more efficient rail connections from Montreal, the East Coast competitors are reaping advantages of economies of scale in container shipping that Montreal cannot match. The newer container ships with capacities exceeding 5,000 TEUs draw more than 13 meters of water. The channel up to Montreal is only 11 meters, thereby restricting Montreal to vessels of 2,200 TEU capacity. The economies of scale advantages of the post-panamax ships stand to heighten the competition between Montreal and the East Coast ports. The costs of dredging the St. Lawrence to comparable depths are prohibitive, even if environmental approval could be obtained. At present the port is investigating the possibilities of limited dredging, and has introduced a real-time water depth monitoring system to provide the shipping lines with accurate information about depths, so that on the many days of the year when depths exceed datum level they can add additional containers.

The growth in container traffic is placing great pressures on the port to accommodate this space-extensive activity. Yet the port has been pre-empted from local expansion. The Upper Harbor has been ceded to non-port uses, and the land down river, an ideal site for expansion, has been pre-empted by the City as a waterfront park. So far the port has managed to cope by making more intensive and efficient use of existing space, but the longer term requires further solutions. One possibility is to expand at Contrecoeur, a site on the other side of the river below Montreal (McCalla 1994). The site is large, but it is on the 'wrong' side of the river and is not well linked by rail, an essential prerequisite. The solution of this problem will determine whether the port will continue to expand.