Saint-Roch

This guide to Saint-Roch in Quebec City follows the Saint-Charles River, which for three centuries powered the shipbuilders and tanners who built this neighborhood, before the same industries turned on it, dumping carcasses and untreated sewage into the current until it became one of the most fouled rivers in the province. It traces the city's 1969 answer to that damage, lining four kilometers of riverbank in concrete and squeezing a living waterway into something closer to a drainage canal. You'll hear how sewer overflows once poured into the water dozens of times a year after a hard rain. Stand at the water's edge and listen to what still moves beneath this neighborhood's streets.