Up through Dow

In which our reporter enters the tightly
knit and secretive community of urban
explorers to investigate the confines
of a long-derelict brewery

“TAKE NOTHING BUT PICTURES,
LEAVE NOTHING BUT FOOTPRINTS”: Controleman

by ERIK LEIJON
photos by RACHEL GRANOFSKY

If there’s one thing the city of Montreal does well, it’s abandoning old buildings and leaving them derelict for extended periods of time. Oh sure, neighbourhoods are continuously being gentrified and it’s impossible to walk five minutes without running into some sort of newfangled condo project being erected, but even in primo real estate areas, it’s entirely possible to find an empty concrete dungeon with nothing but a checkered history and little hope for the future.

Although somewhat shrouded in anonymity (as much as anyone can be in this online age), an increasing number of locals are participating in urban exploration—downtown Magellans who disregard “do not enter” signs and crumbling walls all in the name of curiosity and quality photos.

Since the construction of the first moat and drawbridge, humans have rarely resisted the temptation of venturing into places they don’t belong or into the unknown. Urban exploration in theory may not seem much different than trespassing on private property, as precocious youth looking for kicks typically do, but there’s a commitment to preservation and keeping things pristine that makes true urban explorers different. One of the definitive works on the subject is the 1990s zine Infiltration, written by now-deceased Torontonian Ninjalicious.

“Genuine urban explorers never vandalize, steal or damage anything—we don’t even litter,” he once wrote. Montreal’s media-savvy urban exploration community has largely adopted these words as well. Their tightly knit network includes sites, blogs, message boards and thousands of photos celebrating their forays into the most dilapidated of Montreal’s many districts.

MIXING CAUTION AND CURIOSITY:
Controleman inside the brewery

Pigeons, myths and ghosts

One of the most popular exploration sites in Montreal—as evidenced by a plethora of YouTube videos and online photojournals that at times beg the question, “So, who hasn’t trespassed on that property?”—is the former Dow Brewery in Griffintown. Urban explorer and photography student Controleman, 21, who himself has visited the site countless times in his five years of exploration and has eagerly investigated every nook and cranny, serves as tour guide for this museum of modern decay and showcase for the perils of a fast moving global economy. With a smoke stack still emblazoned with the company moniker, the O’Keefe brand closed the Dow’s doors 19 years ago, and despite the rest of the area receiving an expensive facelift, the massive structure sits in disrepair, and with prospects for some Biodome-style resurrection not in the works.

“At first, you feel like you’re transgressing the law and you don’t really like it,” Controleman says, “but in the end, you realize that you’re not doing anything immoral and that the laws are really just there to protect us from ourselves.“

That being said, we carefully walk across three sides of the old brewery, ensuring that none of the pyjama-pant-sporting blueshirts at the neighourhood station across the street notice. We finally find an available entrance, although Controleman assures me that with his parkour skills he could have in theory found a crevasse and let us in from the inside via the helpful emergency exit. Like a rusted bat-cave, a flock of pigeons explode out of the dark garage opening as we walk towards the innards of the brick and mortar beast. After some initial trouble adjusting to the dark, we finally hit the cold, cavernous inside, which is completely barren except for rubble, pigeon remains and garbage left behind both recently and likely the day the plant closed in 1990.

“There was a scare in the ’60s,” our guide informs me. “Some people had died of alcohol poisoning from drinking too much Dow beer and everyone assumed the beer had killed them. The company never really recovered after that.”

The building itself has also been saddled with some impossible-to-corroborate tales, including a death of a young female that occurred within these walls—resulting in a grim spectre haunting the brewery’s crumbling halls forevermore.

CHEZ RICHARD: Squatters’ digs

Mausoleum of changing tastes

This site happens to be the most visited and well known in the city, so stories have been passed around among aficionados. Some places have no written history, and that means Controleman and his peers research the locales on their own. He says it took about 10 visits for him to truly explore every area of the brewery, and he now knows every significant spot, as if he were the realtor to the damned. Previously separated rooms are now easily accessible because huge holes were gored out of the walls with no grace or care, as if some gigantic termite had bitten its way through.

“When they shut down the brewery,” he says, “they sold everything made of metal, and it was cheaper to just rip it out of the walls than actually remove them.”

Although tenant-less for nearly two decades, save for a stray cat and the pigeon mausoleum, there are clear signs everywhere of recent human activity. Ironically, there are quite a few beer cans strewn about, and mostly shoddily sprayed graffiti tags on the walls still standing (as one might imagine, police frequently assume explorers to be taggers). In addition, huge holes where the beer tanks once stood so proudly churning out quality brew have been enclosed with cheap wood railing. The Climatisations et chauffage urbains de Montréal (CCUM) installed the safety measures. The CCUM is responsible for the underground network of steam pipes that deliver heating throughout the city, and one of the pipes passes underneath the brewery. A formerly accessible entrance to the steam pipe in the building’s basement has since been sealed.

Controleman is quick to point out the many hazardous pitfalls certain to doom anyone not accustomed to carefully treading through abandoned hotspots. There are holes in the ground that could easily break an ankle, or a perilously placed dangling step on a staircase. “If you’re careful, and you pay attention to everything that’s around, you should be able to stay safe,” Controleman says of the new areas he visits, places he doesn’t know like the back of his hand.

As we rise a few floors (by stairs, as the elevator is just one big, dark pit now), the naturally illuminated corridors and main distillery areas form a nice contrast to the spooky, claustrophobic dark recesses of the building. Everywhere, the paint is cracking and peeling like sunburn-afflicted skin. “There’s a huge pile of asbestos,” he humorously points out, finger outstretched to a very large pile of the hazardous insulation product.

HUMANS WERE HERE: Makeshift toilet

Squat and go

There are two more significant portions of the grand tour, including the amazing panorama of the city from the roof. Just by staring out in the direction of St-Henri, Controleman is able to eyeball multiple sites he’s visited in the past, including current incursions into occupied, active areas and the city’s glamorous sewers. “The Dow Brewery is a smooth trip, but if you’re visiting an active site, you need to be careful. You need to trust the people you are exploring with because if you go somewhere with the potential of getting caught, you don’t know how they might react.”

After checking out the hollowed-out back entrance—complete with busted down wall providing a perfect view of the police station below—we fumble our way to the remnants of a squatters’ site. Controleman says he and other explorers still use the site for the occasional hang-out or movie viewing (thanks to someone ingeniously re-routing electricity to the spot), but otherwise it has all the makings of a dishevelled individual’s home. There’s a bed, a closet still containing garments, and a large empty tank transformed into a bathroom.

“He was a nice guy,” Controleman says of the individual whose former abode we are now exploring. “But there were a lot of people coming by this area.” The brewery also stays pretty frigid, even during the summer, to the point where it’s necessary to wear a jacket, says Controleman.

During our brief moment of reflection on the roof, we notice the army of pricey, fancy-looking condos sprouting up and seemingly surrounding the brewery. It serves as a final vestige of the old Montreal still fortified with grime-stained bricks, essentially memorialized and preserved by the few who choose to walk its deteriorated halls long after the taps went dry.

“Ninjalicious had a saying: ‘Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints,’” quotes Controleman. “If you’re careful, you don’t feel like you’re doing anything wrong.”