The Lachine Canal is the reason Montreal became an industrial city and the reason it has a waterfront walk worth the name. Cut in the 1820s to bypass the Lachine Rapids, it drew the mills and factories to its banks for a century, then fell silent, then was reborn as a linear park — water, towpath and the painted bones of the industry that built the place.
About four and a half kilometres, mostly flat, best in the afternoon. Start at the entrance locks below the Old Port, where the canal meets the St Lawrence, and walk west along the towpath. The early locks at Pointe-des-Seigneurs mark the original 1825 cut; past them, the brick run of converted mills carries the ghost signs of sugar and chocolate firms long gone. Stop at the Saint-Gabriel locks, where the mechanism still steps boats down between levels.
The path narrows and greens — willows, still water, the cyclists thick on warm days. It ends at Atwater Market, the deco clock tower over the basin, with Lionel-Groulx metro just beyond.
