story and photos by Kayte Deioma
Some people think that by definition a museum should have grand paintings or ancient statues and take all day to visit. Museums of everyday history like historic homes and local history museums are more likely to present more mundane items of common use over a period of time in a particular place. Archaeological museums may have grand discoveries like artifacts from ancient Egypt or Angkor Wat. In fact, many people go into archaeology with a romantic notion of going off and discovering mythical civilizations a la Indiana Jones. In reality a lot of the field work is digging around in the refuse of a bygone era. However, in looking at what people chose to discard or build over, even close to home, sometimes researchers do uncover a lost city.
That’s what happened when the Society for Development of the Old Port had archaeologists survey the Pointe-ŕ-Calličre in Old Montreal with the intention of creating a park across from the Old Customs House. What they found were remnants of previous occupants of the site all the way back to the city’s founding in 1642. Stone walls of generations of earlier buildings had been built over the first Catholic cemetery where French settlers and Indians were buried side by side.
The archaeological site was deemed too important to be covered with a park. The challenge was how to preserve the site from deterioration, yet make it accessible to the public. The solution was the Pointe-ŕ-Calličre, Montréal Museum of Archaeology and History, also known as PAC. The museum was created by re-building Place Royal, the city’s first public square, and the new Éperon building overtop of the underground site in such a way that visitors could explore the excavation below. The underground passages extend under the Old Customs House, which was incorporated into the museum.
Pointe-ŕ-Calličre is the point formed by the joining of the Little St. Pierre River and the St. Lawrence River when the original French settlement of Ville Marie was established at this spot on the Island of Montreal. It was named for Louis-Hector de Calličre, third Governor of Montreal, who built his home here. The Little St. Pierre was later turned into a covered sewer system and then disappeared altogether. Although the little river is no more, the contemporary gray masonry façade and clock tower of the Éperon building conform to the shape of the point and the buildings that existed previously on this site. The entrance to the underground complex is through this modern structure.
In the multimedia theatre, a 20-minute video introduction in French with English translation via headsets is projected onto translucent screens suspended into the ruins below. A brief history of Montreal and Point-a-Calliere is narrated by Montreal’s founder, missionary Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve, who leads you through the centuries.
The primary exhibit at Pointe-ŕ-Calličre is the archaeological site itself, where you can see how an outhouse was situated above the graves in the first Catholic cemetery and wander among the stone walls to see how buildings were built on top of previous structures. You can walk where the Little St. Pierre River was channeled into the sewage canal with protruding brick conduits and you can see remains of Governor Calličre’s home.
In addition to the excavated ruins, the artifacts found in the dig are displayed and interpreted according to the appropriate time period from Indian arrowheads to an 18 th century chamber pot and a 20 th century milk bottle. Multicolored information displays provide the history and significance of the times and the artifacts. A large interactive circular display lets you see the layout of the area in whatever time period you select. Glass windows in the floor show models of the neighborhood through the ages. At the far end toward the Customs House, motion-activated historic characters emerge
holographically from the stone walls to tell their story.
A semi-permanent exhibit, Montreal Love Stories, is on display in the Old Customs House. It is a celebration of Montreal’s multicultural couples and family traditions. The upper galleries in the Éperon building host a variety of traveling exhibits. There is also an excellent restaurant, L’Arrivage, upstairs in the Éperon. It is only open for lunch and reservations are recommended since it is very popular with local business people. The museum Gift Shop is around the corner at 150 St. Paul West.
Free guided tours are available in English on Saturdays at 2:30 pm all year long with additional tours at the same time on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays in the summer. French tours are at 1:30 pm on the same days.
Pointe-ŕ-Calličre, Montréal Museum of Archaeology and History
350 Place Royale, Corner of de la Commune
Old Montréal, Quebec
H2Y 3Y5 Canada
Tel.: (514) 872-9150
E-mail: info@pacmusee.qc.ca
Website: www.pacmusee.qc.ca
Metro: Place-d’Armes station
Parking: pay parking in the Old Port.
The primary difference between voluntourism and simply volunteering in post-Katrina New Orleans is that volunteers are usually housed and fed by their sponsoring organization in camps, churches or community centers. Voluntourists report for volunteer duty during the day, but put money back into the struggling economy by staying in hotels, eating at restaurants and enjoying local attractions. This not only helps to keep local businesses open, but also reduces the financial burden on relief organizations.
Fred Schenck and Makoto Ogura, both high school teachers from Evanston, Illinois, used their Spring break to volunteer gutting houses for 
Lynn Vear came with her husband Dale Schultz and their fifteen-year-old son Carson to volunteer at Emergency Communities‘ “Made with Love Cafe” in St. Bernard Parish near New Orleans. The family stayed at Elysian Fields Bed & Breakfast in Fauberg Marigny, next to the French Quarter while volunteering every day for Emergency Communities. “We usually go away somewhere on spring break, but I didn’t feel like we could indulge ourselves somewhere when there is so much need,” says Vear, who works in the advertising department of Bon Appetite Magazine. “They 
don’t allow people under 18 in the camp and I’m not much of a camper” says Vear. “We would have spent the money anyway for a hotel if we had gone somewhere on vacation.”
Until now, it has been difficult for individuals, families and small groups of friends, known in the disaster relief community as “unaffiliated volunteers,” to find places to help, simply because the coordination hasn’t been there. Organized groups have been able to volunteer through their churches or civic organizations, but for unaffiliated volunteers, it took a lot of research to track down organizations on the ground that needed help and would accept people who were not part of a group. Most of the traditional religious and non-profit groups also require a one or two week minimum time commitment that is not possible or desirable for everyone.
Before the great rebuilding can begin, the houses that are structurally sound need to be cleared of all remaining contents and gutted. Many different organizations are doing house gutting for low income home owners who don’t have the insurance to cover the cost of hiring professionals. This is probably the greatest single use of unskilled volunteer time in the short term. Some of these services are free; others charge a fee to the home owner to cover the cost of outfitting volunteers in Tyvek suits, boots, rubber gloves and masks to protect them from mold and other hazardous materials. Some organizations require volunteers to bring their own protective gear or pay for it once they are on site. If you have mold or dust allergies or other breathing problems, this is not for you. If you are sensitive to heat, you do not want to be doing this work in the summer.
Made with Love Café served its last meal May 31st, but the team is relocating to an elementary school being set up to house volunteers in Violet, about six miles away. Emergency Communities will be running the kitchen, which will serve 1500 volunteers plus local residents working on their homes. The new location is still in St. Bernard Parish, about a 20-minute drive from the French Quarter. All of the 26,900 homes in St. Bernard Parish were left uninhabitable after Hurricane Katrina. Five out of six homeowners had no flood insurance. (Update February 2007 – Emergency Communities has re-opened in New Orleans in the 9th Ward.)
hundreds of volunteers from all over the world to their half-day clean ups. On my visit in April 2006, actress Paula Patton from Los Angeles, was working up a sweat picking up trash on her day off from shooting the film Déjŕ Vu with Denzel Washington. Other volunteers helping out that Wednesday morning were individuals, families and church groups from Boston, Jackson, Wyoming, Grand Rapids, Michigan, and from cities around New Orleans. “It makes me proud to be part of a country whose citizens care about other citizens of this country,” says Richard Druant, a retired New Orleans police officer, whose home in nearby Kenner had about $20,000 in wind and rain damage. “I’ve been coming every Wednesday for about 10 weeks, and have worked along side people from all over,” he says. “People don’t come here for recognition. They come because they care.”
Through the spring, the Katrina Krewe went out twice a week on Wednesday and Saturday mornings, but they are cutting back to once a month through the heat of the summer and reevaluating after that. Other church and community groups will be picking up some of the slack, organizing their own neighborhood clean ups. Both the monthly Katrina Krewe clean ups and the efforts organized by partner organizations are posted on the Katrina Krewe’s website, 
Gardening. For people who love to garden, or anyone who doesn’t mind pulling a few weeds, the 
There are plenty of opportunities to serve and it is getting easier to find them. 
from driving a tour bus volunteering for Habitat in New Orleans. “They don’t want to gut a white person’s house, only a poor black person’s house, or they only want to work in New Orleans, not in Biloxi.” You can choose which organization you want to volunteer for and to some extent, what project area you want to work in (e.g. house gutting versus kitchen), but then you should be willing to do whatever needs to be done.
Be safe. Every organization and every different function has specific safety procedures, whether it’s not to sneeze on the food if you’re serving in a food line or what kind of mask to wear gutting houses. Most site supervisors are well versed in safety issues, but don’t count on it. If your own common sense and advance planning research tells you to keep a mask on at all times when gutting houses, don’t listen to someone telling you that the dry dust won’t hurt you.