With the inauguration of the mural in homage to Françoise Sullivan, the one just as freshly painted which adorns one of the pavilions of the École de Technologie Supérieure (ETS) has gone rather unnoticed. Its title: Timelines. If we see hops several times there, it’s not simply because students like to drink beer…
“It’s a lesson in the history of the neighborhood,” summarizes Julien-Pierre Lacombe, sustainable development advisor at ETS.
We often talk about the Griffintown neighborhood as a missed opportunity. But if we can cite one success, it is the conversion of the old Dow brewery buildings into the ETS campus.
ETS left the Plateau to settle in Griffintown in 1996, five years after the brewery’s last bottle of beer was produced. “We started with one building. We are now at 15. We have really developed a university district with works of public art and four parks,” explains Julien-Pierre Lacombe.
In the 1960s, Dow beer was the favorite of many Quebecers. But when around twenty consumers in the Quebec region died, it was the beginning of the end.
The Dow Brewery was at the heart of Griffintown and this neighborhood’s brewing heritage is an important part of the Lignes du temps work. Reference is also made to the strong Irish immigration and the importance of the Lachine Canal in the industrial advent of Montreal and even Canada.
It took the Artducommun collective team three months to complete the 19,000 square foot mural that adorns Pavilion A of the ETS, and more than 500 chalks to trace it! “We worked in the evening with projectors,” says Jasmin Guérard Alie, co-founder of the Artducommun collective.
To find out more about the Dow Brewery, Jasmin Guérard Alie and her accomplice Simon Bachand consulted THE great connoisseur of the history of the Dow Brewery, Pierre Guillot-Hurtubise. “I’m not a historian, but a collector,” he says.
Her collection began with a tray given by her mother, who collected jewelry.
Since 2012, some of its artifacts have been featured in the exhibition Say So Dow! The story of a local brewery, presented in the INGO Innovation Crossroads building at the ETS. This was the first “outside the walls” exhibition produced by the Pointe-à-Callière museum.
“The brewing heritage is very little commemorated in Quebec,” underlines Pierre Guillot-Hurtubise, who spent the last weekend of the Culture Days guiding visitors through the exhibition.
“It’s important to know the past of a neighborhood,” adds Julien-Pierre Lacombe, recalling that the construction of the former Dow planetarium – today occupied by the ETS Centech incubator – was financed by the brewery a year before the unfortunate events…
When the planetarium was inaugurated on April 1, 1966 by Mayor Jean Drapeau, Dow was doing great business. A few months later, the media reported the mysterious deaths of around twenty men from the Quebec region, all heavy consumers of Dow beer.
As a matter of urgency and prevention, Dow then decided to throw 500,000 gallons of beer down the drain. But for the public, the damage was done.
The cause ? The addition of larger quantities of cobalt salt at the Dow brewery in Quebec to increase the head of foam. “The autopsy of the deceased men revealed that their hearts were streaked with pale and dark bands,” says Pierre Guillot-Hurtubise, recalling the existence of the book Les Coeurs Tigrés by cardiologist Yves Morin.
The “killer beer” scandal is often cited as an example of a public relations failure. Nice coincidence: this is the area in which Pierre Guillot-Hurtubise excels at the National cabinet (although he does not specialize in crisis management, but in relations with communities and social acceptability).
Although much mystery remains and no charges have been filed, these facts led to the undoing of Dow who was bought out shortly after by his “arch enemy” O’Keefe.
Isn’t that a fascinating story? This shows that a mural can reveal little-known parts of the past. The mural is also a few steps from the exhibition which is located in the INGO Innovation Hub building on Rue Peel and to which entry is free Monday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
