A. C. Leslie & Cie Limitée

A. C. Leslie & Cie Limitée drifts now only as a hollow memory on the edge of Montréal’s industrial spine, its final breath exhaled in 2020 before the demolition crews tore open its concrete skin, yet the ghost of its overhead crane still swings silently in the mind, a steel spine that once glided above the workshop floor like a mechanical vertebra guiding the weight of the world; the place had carried the scent of warm metal and machine grease, the air vibrating with the low growl of motors as sparks crawled across beams and the great rolling bridge traced its weary path along the girders, leaving faint grooves like scars in the structure’s bones, and even in its last abandoned months the building seemed to tense and shiver, dust drifting from the rafters as if the old factory were shedding its final layer of time, the echo of tools long gone still clinging to the steel framework that rose and fell like the ribs of a tired beast, now vanished from the landscape but not from the breath of the city it once helped shape.