What happened to the Montreal harbour ice shove?

They were surreal sights: mountains of ice, some as high as several storeys, pummeling Montreal's Old Port.

For 19th-century Montrealers,the springtime threat of a wall of ice plowing downtheir livelihoods and paralyzing the port was an ever-present threat. And when an ice shove happened, it was unstoppable, taking outeverything its path.

"If you were one of the port commissioners, or if you had infrastructurein the port, you were probably not very happy," said Tyler Wood, a guide at theCentre d'histoire de Montral.

"But if you were just a passerby and you were walking through, it was a spectacle. Before the internet, people probably came down here to check out the ice shoves."

An ice slabwas at onceboth terrifying and theInsta-worthydestination of choice for Victorian-era tourists.

People stood atop the massive chunksof ice like mountaineers, snapping photographs. They sent postcards to their friends.

But just what caused theMontreal ice shoves, and why don't we see themtoday? Wood has the answers.

What the Montreal: What was the Montreal ice shove?

6 years ago

Duration 3:29

Mountains of ice plowed through the port indiscriminately until modern engineering solved the destructive problem.

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