Urban bouldering in Montreal
The climbing wall company OnSite has moved three massive granite boulders, carrying over 20 problems, into the centre of Montreal. Urban bouldering here is not new, but this development is bold and promising: real rock, in the city, free to climb.
A short history of Montreal buildering
Distance from the crags pushed generations of Montreal climbers onto urban installations. Before Quebec had its first indoor facilities, climbers in the city were already starting out on buildings.
The discipline got its first real documentation in 2008, with the release of Antoine Séguin’s documentary Dist-urban Behaviour. A few years later we published a series of buildering videos of our own. They were originally shot for a high school project, and they went viral.
Concrete Climbing @ Rosemont, Montreal from B. Bro Production on Vimeo.
Why it matters
Buildering has always been the answer to a practical problem. The rock is hours away, the gym costs money and closes, and the city is right there. That improvisation is a real part of how climbing developed in Montreal, and it shaped a generation of climbers who learned to read holds on surfaces nobody designed for climbing.
What OnSite has done is give that instinct somewhere legitimate to go. Granite in a public space asks nothing of you but that you show up.
