by PATRICK LEJTENYI

For over two decades, it was Montreal’s best-kept secret. The Big O pipe, a unique design add-on to Roger Taillibert’s most infamous addition to the city’s skyline, has since 1979 been the setting for some of North America’s most daring skateboarding, a hideaway under the noses of most locals but renowned worldwide in the clubby society of skaters.

It isn’t much to look at, to the untrained eye anyway, but the whistle-inspired Pipe—built as an entrance tunnel for athletes at the 1976 Olympics—attracted the attention of skateboarders who were drawn to its halfpipe, flat bottom, smooth transitions and quarterpipe wall. The design made for an almost perfect half-pipe, and skaters rocked it like hell. Skateboarder Magazine calls it one of “10 Spots You Gotta Skate Before You Die.”

The Pipe, which was threatened with destruction last summer by the Montreal Impact soccer team’s new stadium, appears to be saved for now, and has been immortalized in a new book published by one-woman publishing house MudScout Media. The launch takes place Friday, Dec. 15 at the Nest (3673 St-Dominique, 8 p.m.).

Pipe Fiends: A Visual Overdose of Canada’s Most Infamous Skate Spot, was compiled by Barry Walsh, 35, and Marc Tison, 33, two of the Pipe’s regular riders, and is, as promised, a visual feast. With slick, glossy pages, bold type and varied fonts, and hundreds upon hundreds of stunning photos spanning over 20 years, the book adds an understanding to even the non-skateboarding public of the Pipe’s heralded place in Canadian skating lore. As much a hang-out for friends as an immensely challenging spot, it hearkened back, say Walsh and Tison, to the days of backyard skating, when kids built their own ramps and before corporate interest took over the sport.

Sitting over a beer at Bifteck, along with MudScout’s Emma McKay, the two skaters don’t try to hide their wariness of the current skateboarding culture. They don’t dislike flat skating, they say. But it sure isn’t good old-fashioned trans. “We’ve never made a dollar off skateboarding,” says Walsh. “But we’re the only ones who have stayed true when it comes to transition skating.”

Tison considers the book an addition to Montreal’s reputation as a unique skateboarding town. He looks back at Rouli-roulant (a.k.a. The Devil’s Toy), Claude Jutras’s classic 1966 mini-doc about skateboarding, mostly in Westmount. “Punk was representing in Montreal in the ’60s,” he says. “So we want to carry the torch. This book is our way of saying, ‘This is our reality,’ and hopefully we can inspire another generation.”

Skating the same spot day in and day out for 20 years, as these two have, doesn’t get old. They haven’t yet conquered it, says Tison, who was stunned when an excited Walsh told him recently about a new, seemingly impossible trick he’d just come up with. Innovation is what the Pipe is all about, they say. “It’s a real fact that when big touring teams go there, they get shined by the locals and their friends,” says Walsh with some pride. “We don’t want to shine them. We’re just holding down our spot.”

And that spot, says Tison, “is a gift from the skate gods.”

The $28 book will be available online at www.mudscout.com and www.amazon.ca, and through better skate shops across the coutry.