The Lachine Canal: the towpath to Atwater Market
The old locks, the converted factories, the cyclists and the water, from the Old Port to Atwater. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. The Old Port locks (écluses du Vieux-Port)
Start where the canal meets the St Lawrence, by the entrance locks below the Old Port. This is the river end — boats lock through in summer. Pick up the towpath west; the city's whole industrial story unspools from here.

2. Pointe-des-Seigneurs & the early locks
The narrowing where the original 1825 canal squeezed through, restored locks and stone walls beside the path. Read the interpretive panels if you like; this was the cut that opened the continent's interior to Montreal's port and made the city rich.

3. Le Lowney / the converted factories
The long brick run of old mills and warehouses — sugar, chocolate, machinery — now lofts and offices with their water-side cranes left as ornament. Look up at the painted ghost signs; the names of vanished industries are still on the walls.

4. Saint-Gabriel locks (écluses Saint-Gabriel)
A restored double lock with the keeper's house, a good place to sit by the water and watch a pleasure boat step down between levels. The mechanism still works; it's the clearest look at how the whole canal once breathed.

5. The bike-and-walk path narrows
Here the towpath is busiest — cyclists, runners, families on the rented bikes. Keep to the walkers' side. The canal goes quiet and green through this stretch, willows leaning over still water, the factories thinning out.

6. Atwater Market & the basin
End at the 1933 market hall with its art-deco clock tower rising over the canal basin. Cross the footbridge for the best look back down the water. The market is the reward — and Lionel-Groulx metro is two minutes beyond it.

The Lachine Canal: the towpath to Atwater Market