Lifecycle
EVERY DECADE OR SO, THE CITY of Paris drains the Canal Saint-Martin. The waterway, which runs south for almost 5km on the Right Bank, was originally constructed to keep Paris clean, supplying fresh water to a city plagued by cholera and dysentery. But for the two centuries of the canal’s existence, it has often served a different function. It is a dumping ground, a big liquid trash can. The periodic draining is therefore also an unveiling. The water recedes, and the stuff kicked or heaved or furtively dropped into the canal over the preceding few thousand nights is revealed.
When the canal was emptied in 2016, crowds gathered on footbridges and along the quais to watch cleaning crews trudge through the mud and clear out the junk. There was lots of it. Mattresses, suitcases, street signs, traffic cones. A washer-dryer, a tailor’s mannequin, tables and chairs, bath s, toilets, old radios, personal computers. A number of vehicles, none of them designed to travel on water, were pulled from the mire. There were baby strollers, shopping carts, at least one wheelchair and several mopeds.
Today, the streets abutting the canal in the 10th arrondissement are among the most fashionable in Paris, lined with chic cafes and restaurants. But, late at night, the area retains some of the dank atmosphere of bygone years, when it was a scruffy quartier populaire and often served as the setting for noir films and detective novels. In pulp fiction tales, dark secrets emerge from the Canal Saint-Martin murk. The murder mystery in Georges Simenon’s Maigret and the Headless Corpse is set in motion when the police dredge up a dismembered body near the Quai de Valmy. No human remains were discovered during the 2016 cleaning, but workers did find a handgun. Later, officials announced that a rifle had also been found.
The most plentiful items in the canal – other than wine bottles and mobile phones – were bicycles. In 2007, Paris had launched a bike-share scheme, Vélib’, introducing 14,500 rental bicycles across the city. As the waters were drawn off, the skeletal forms of dozens of Vélib’ cruisers could
