About the pink house on the malting site
The origins of a pink house on top of the old Canada Malting site in St-Henri have been debated on Instagram and Twitter and have now made it to the CBC site. Obviously it’s not really a house – somebody painted an old industrial element as a prank – but CBC implies that someone’s living in it. However, if they find anything out about it, won’t that person risk being charged with trespassing?



ProposMontreal-Martin 11:29 on 2020-07-18 Permalink
I have done some urbex in there many many years ago and it was NOT easy to get up there. I’m pretty sure it’s even more difficult now. So yes, I’ve been wondering since it’s been painted, who did and how without being spotted.
MarcG 12:02 on 2020-07-18 Permalink
The owner of the building used to weld weird stuff into the fence to make it harder to access – things like old wire, hunks of steel, basically any old junk he could find lying around – which made for an interesting piece of outsider art, but sometime in the past year or two it seems like part of the fence disappeared and it’s now much easier to access the land around the building. Google streetview is from 2014 so you can see the old fence https://goo.gl/maps/8t8crx14N2btm7J59.
John B 12:29 on 2020-07-18 Permalink
Isn’t the pink the colour of the neighbouring bar, or their logo, or something similar? When it was originally painted I remember seeing something like that somewhere.
Matthew H 12:33 on 2020-07-18 Permalink
There are two painted sheds, one pink and one red. I think the CBC article is a little tongue in cheek, there’s no way anyone is actually living there. I added the Canada Malting Silos to Atlas Obscura a few weeks ago, with some photos.
Kate 22:33 on 2020-07-18 Permalink
Nice work, Matthew H.
Ian 07:51 on 2020-07-20 Permalink
I have climbed up there myself about10 years ago, it’s not that hard – didn’t require any special equipment though the building has deteriorated a lot since then. I know a couple of urbex folks that actually made a zip line from the silos to the main building. I don’t know who painted the little house pink (which is awesome IMO) but it’s not as much of a feat as you might think.
EmilyG 08:36 on 2020-07-20 Permalink
Yeah, I haven’t seen much mention of the red one.
Andrew 13:12 on 2020-07-20 Permalink
The article mentions “christmas lights” but it was actually a fairly sizeable and fully decorated Christmas tree. Someone carried it up there and back down again when the season was over, you can even see a guy wire in this photo:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/mSJUUtmsmCuXWGXv7
Michael Black 13:42 on 2020-07-20 Permalink
That was thoughtful of them, taking down the decorations after Christmas