Parc Frédéric-Back

This guide to Parc Frederic-Back in Montreal opens on a spring Saturday in 1988, when fifty thousand people gathered to watch two concrete chimneys come down, chimneys that once marked one of North America's largest limestone quarries, run for decades by the Miron family. You'll hear how their quarry fed a cement empire that built much of downtown Montreal, and how the same pit was later filled with the city's garbage even as quarrying continued next door. That same year, the city bought the scarred property outright before tearing the towers down in front of the crowd.