PARC DE LA TRAVERSÉE
A vibrant and active thread linking heritage, connectivity, and neighbordhood life
The longest linear park on the Island of Montreal, Parc de la Traversée transforms a former railway wasteland into a vibrant 4.25 km ecological and cultural corridor stretching from 1st to 53rd Avenue. Designed by WAA and FNX, this large-scale project breathes new life into a forgotten axis, weaving together industrial heritage, urban biodiversity, and civic engagement.
At both ends of the park, monumental corten steel gateways mark the transition into this signature space. Evoking historic railway structures, these sculptural frames also house insect hotels, tucked into their architecture and directly connected to the wildflower meadows that animate the site. Together, they offer a symbolic and ecological threshold to a welcoming, living landscape.
Guided by three key principles — memory, mobility, and community — the project offers a bold and thoughtful vision of the contemporary public realm.
Memory of Place: The trail faithfully follows the old railway alignment, reactivated as a soft-mobility backbone for the city. Furniture, rest areas, and raw materials (corten, concrete) all pay tribute to the site's industrial past. Sandblasted track patterns, reinterpreted signage, and poems engraved by local residents compose an urban poetry that connects stories past and present.
Inclusive Mobility: Designed for all, the path includes both a dedicated bike lane and a pedestrian promenade. Every detail — width, textures, lighting, signage, traffic-calming zones — was carefully considered to ensure safety, clarity, and seasonal use, including winter cross-country skiing.
A Living Community Space: Three thematic rest stops — Heritage, Culture & Leisure, Playful — serve as micro public spaces for reflection, gathering, and play. Each reinforces social connection and local identity, creating more than just pause points: they are places to inhabit.
The landscape strategy celebrates resilient urban nature: the project features the borough’s first wildflower meadow, planted with nearly 50 species — many native and pollinator-friendly. In addition, rain gardens were created to naturally capture and filter stormwater, reducing runoff while enhancing the ecological function of the site.
Robust and contextual materials — corten, raw wood, concrete — reflect the industrial and riverside identity of Pointe-aux-Trembles. The design language is sober, contemporary, and site-specific. Finally, the name of the park, chosen through a public naming competition, evokes both a physical journey and a symbolic passage — from rail to trail, from history to future.
Parc de la Traversée is more than a path. It is a landscape manifesto.
A bold, unifying, and inspiring gesture for future urban transformations; it hums with flora, it hums with fauna, it hums with human activity and neighborhood life.
One of the community leaders and early visionaries behind this park, Michel Langlois, sadly lost his battle with illness before seeing it completed. To him — and to many like him — we owe this park.
