Montreal Underground - Archaeology Magazine Archive

Pointe-à-Callière takes you into the past


The Pointe-à-Callière Museum	Plaque commemorating the founders of Montreal

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Louise Pothier, Project Manager of Pointe-à-Callière with Malin Banyasz of ARCHAEOLOGY magazine

This past August I traveled to Montreal for Archaeo (Archaeology) Month, which is celebrated throughout the province of Quebec. On my first day in Montreal, I met with Louise Pothier, project manager for the Montreal Museum of Archaeology and History. The museum, better known as Pointe-à-Callière and affectionately referred to as the PAC Musée, is located in Old Montreal on the very spot of the city's birthplace on May 17, 1642, and opened exactly 350 years later on May 17, 1992.

PAC Musée is situated on a point of land where the Little Saint Pierre River once ran into the St. Lawrence River. Chevalier Louis Hector de Callière, the third governor of Montreal, built a home on the site in 1688. The museum is situated atop remains of the first French settlement here, Fort Ville Marie (1642-1674), and its permanent exhibition is titled, "Where Montreal was Born."

Old Montreal architecture among the new. It now houses a Starbucks!

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The Old Seminary building (1684-1687) built by Francois Dollier de Casson

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The old Customs House built in 1836

The PAC Musée consists of six buildings and structures:

The Eperon Building
A very modern piece of architecture, it rises from the foundations of the building that once stood here, the Royal Insurance Company (1866). Its clock tower, a tribute to its predecessor marks the entrance to the museum. In this, the museum's main building, you can find the reception area and a multimedia theater.

Place Royale and The Archaeological Crypt
The Place Royale is Montreal's first outdoor public square. Below the Place Royale are archaeological remains and artifacts from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries in the excavated area known as the "archaeological crypt." The crypt links the Eperon building and Ancienne-Douane.

The Ancienne-Douane
This building, which dates back to 1836, originally housed Montreal's first Custom House (its name means "the Old Custom House"). It was designed by architect John Ostell and now houses the museum's gift shop.

The Youville Pumping Station
173 Place D'Youville, this was Montreal's first electrically operated wastewater pumping station. Dating from 1915, it is now an interpretive center.

The Archaeological Field School
A 19th-century building, it formerly housed the Townsend Company, which was an outfitter for ships in the Port of Montreal. Since 2002, Pointe-à-Callière's field school has excavated beneath it. It is located at 214 Place D'Youville.

The Mariner's House
In 1875, it was originally the Montreal Sailors' Institute, a place where the merchant mariners stopped to rest and eat. It was purchased by PAC in 2004 and is used to house its educational collections. It is located at 165-169 Place D'Youville.

As my first part of the tour, Pothier led me into the multimedia room in the Eperon building. The floor and front of the multimedia room open onto excavated remains of the city. A film, projected against this archaeological background, brings the history of Montreal alive, taking you through six centuries of history and giving you a real feel for what life was like back then. After viewing the film, Pothier and I started our descent down a flight of steps into the museum's multilevel basement where my underground tour began.


Information panel shows a Native American club	Timeline with artifacts from the site dating back to A.D. 1000	Artifacts from an Iroquoian village at the site

The French, led by Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve a 29-year old sailor, and Jeanne Mance a 34-year-old nurse, landed here in 1642. Maissonneuve and Mance headed a group of 40 men, four women, and several children sent by the Société de Notre Dame to convert the Indians and civilize them. One of the most fascinating sights of the underground tour is the part of the first Catholic burial ground in Montreal (1643-1654). Although Maisonneuve and Mance were buried elsewhere, there are graves of both Indians and French colonists from the very earliest days of the settlement. It is the oldest man-made feature directly associated with the city's founding.


First Catholic French and Indian cemetery; wooden structure at left is of later date	Some of the remains of the archaeological crypt under the Place Royale	Inverted arch used to fortify the foundation of the Royal Insurance Clock Tower

From here, Pothier took me under an old vaulted cut-stone conduit--the former bed of the Little Saint Pierre. The conduit was one of Montreal's oldest collector sewers. Built in 19th century, it remained in use until 1989. In the future, the museum hopes to make it accessible to the public, and continue the section of it on display all the way to McGill Street some 800 meters away. After crossing under the conduit, you end up beneath the Place Royale, where the archaeological crypt is. The Eperon and the Ancienne-Douane buildings are linked under the Place Royale, the city's first public square.

In the crypt you find remains from diverse time periods. There are traces of stockade posts (1684) and a guardroom (1698). As you follow along the walkway, there are stones from the city's 18th-century fortifications. There are traces of cobblestone streets from the late 18th century, and the walls of the Wurtele Inn (1802). Display cases of artifacts from the excavation contain beads made from glass, wood and shells; copper projectile points; combs made of horn; funeral pipes; pottery sherds, some made of buff earthenware with a green glaze may have come from Sadirac in France; bear teeth; gunflints; arrowheads; and animal bones. The crypt illustrates five different time periods of life at the site: pre-14th century and the 14th century, as well as the French, British, and contemporary periods.

Model beneath glass floor shows how the settlement looked

Montreal's oldest collector sewer where the Little Sainte Pierre River once was.	A 19th-century brick sewer crossing the foundations of 18th-century French fortification

There is a wonderful slide show called "Market Day 1750," with audio, projected on the stone walls, depicting what life must have been like at the time. It is called, "Market Day 1750." There are even chickens running around the marketplace! Another wonderful touch done by the museum are models in the crypt that you can see through glass panels in the floor that show you how the site evolved from earliest times to the late 19th century.

After finishing the tour, we lunched at the museum's restaurant, L'Arrivage, overlooking the St. Lawrence River, Habitat and the Biosphere, both structures originally built for the Montreal World's Fair Expo of 1967. Brad Loewen, the archaeologist who directs the field school, joined us. After lunch, I gave my sincere thanks to Louise and continued my day with a tour of the field school adjacent to Pointe-à-Callière led by Brad.


Excavations of the archaeological field school

A product of a partnership between Pointe-à-Callière and the University of Montreal's anthropology department, the field school began in 2002. It is located in a 19th-century building that for 75 years was home to the Townsend Company, an outfitter for ships in the Port of Montreal. The building has no basement, a rarity in historic Montreal, and has remains preserved below. The field school's mission is to carry out archaeological research about Montreal's first settlement and to answer such questions as, Why it was founded here?

After eight continuous seasons, Loewen and his students are learning more and more about Montreal's birthplace. For example, they have found fragments of gray slate imported from France that are believed to come from Callière's residence. Fragments of ceramics made in France and floor tiles made in New France that they have recovered have been identified with certainty as belonging to Fort Ville Marie. A highlight of my tour with Loewen was seeing many of the artifacts from the field school first hand.


Sherds of pottery recovered during field school excavations		Archaeologist Brad Loewen in the field school office with Malin Banyasz

The museum has, deservedly, won numerous awards. The Archaeological Field School was given the Award for Outstanding Achievement from the Canadian Museums Association in 2002, and Pointe-à-Callière Museum won the Conservation and Heritage Management Award from the Archaeological Institute of America in 2007.

My visit to Montreal for Archaeo month and especially my visit to Pointe-à-Callière was an experience that I will long remember. Merci, merci beaucoup, Louise and Brad.

Malin Grunberg Banyasz is ARCHAEOLOGY's editorial assistant. Special thanks go to Katherine Evans with the Opus Hotel in Montreal for her gracious hospitality.