Residents of two buildings on Walkley Avenue, in Montreal’s Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough, were left to live in near freezing temperatures for 10 days. The electricity was cut last Saturday for 36 hours. When it came back on, the pipes started to burst. “It was so cold,” said Alex, a pseudonym CTV News agreed to use because the tenant fears possible reprisal. “Then I hear boom, and it was my pipe breaking.” With ankle high water, puddling in his living room, Alex quickly tried to salvage his belongings. He called the fire department, who shut off the heating system for the building. It was the hot water pipe that feeds Alex’s radiator that had burst. Then he called his landlord. “I told him, yo, we have to clean it,” Alex said. “He said no, it’s okay, the water will evaporate by itself.” That was last Thursday. On Tuesday, there was extensive damage to the walls and floor of his apartment. Black oily water seeped through the floorboards, leaving a thick grime throughout the unit. And still, the temperature is near zero degrees. “I don’t even sleep here anymore,” he said. “I’m sleeping at the gym right now because I don’t want to be sick.” The city has now stepped in and evacuated Alex’s unit. The Red Cross has offered him emergency accommodation. Jean d’Haiti is the owner of 5345 and 5355 Walkley Avenue. Both buildings have had major ongoing maintenance issues in recent years. In 2024, CTV News visited the building to report on another water leak, in a different unit, that opened up a hole in a bathroom ceiling. Rodents were getting into the unit and it took months to repair. Since 2023, the city says 15 notices of violation have been issued to the owner, including six in the last year alone. D’Haiti insists all of those issues have been resolved with the city and blames the current issues on the recent hydro outage. “It’s not just me,” he said, in a phone interview. “Every owner in the area is dealing with the same thing.” But according to several tenants, there have been issues with heating systems in both buildings for over a year. “Before the power went out, it was 10 to 12 degrees,” said Alex, who first reported the issues with the heating in December 2024. “After it came back, the heater doesn’t work at all. So, it was like one to two degrees in the night.” Alex’s apartment isn’t the only one affected. He knows of at least five units with burst pipes. One family who spoke to CTV News, but did not want to appear on camera, said they have been sleeping in their kitchen with their baby because it is the only room in the apartment their small electric heater can keep warm. “People don’t have much money,” Alex said. “I don’t think it’s normal that we have to pay for that.” The Red Cross has also offered alternate accommodation to other tenants until the heating is fixed, but for now, none of the other units have been evacuated. For Alex, the fight continues. Leaving is not an option. He says his name has already been blacklisted for filing complaints with the Administrative Housing Tribunal (TAL). “I have to fight for me and for other people, for their security” he said. “If we run away every time, nothing will change.”
