.................AIR Every historical time period has a distinct air. Air can be specific when it can be identified visibly or by smell. Visible pollution and invisible substances filled the air when the industries along Saint-Patrick were going full force. The Coal Unloading Tower in this picture is all that's left of 'LaSalle Coke', a coke manufacturing plant that employed many of the Italians in Ville Emard. The production of coke and its by-products is associated with both visible and invisible air hazards including: coke breeze, the residue from heat-treated coke; fugitive air that emitted volatile organic compounds from the coke ovens; and air emissions that included benzene, sulfur oxide and nitrogen oxide. As industry moved forward to eliminate this 'old air' from our environment, others have moved in to destroy it. Today we breathe in artificial air in closed buildings and the sickening smells of fast food. I am in awe of this crane. The structure stands 175 feet above the Canal water. I think about the men that worked in that cabin up there, unloading coal at the rate of 300 tons an hour from the 'Key' boats. Cote Saint Paul/Ville Emard is the windiest section of the Canal making this job site extremely cold in the winter. This is why I chose this picture to show air. It represents substance and climate. The cabin and the tower still stand today, I left them in colour. But the air I'm talking about is set in the past and so I chose to distinguish it in black and white, as a reminder that even air has history.