Things to Do on a Rainy Day in Detroit
Featured articles:
- The Motown Museum: Hitsville USA
- Motor City Roots: An Automotive Legacy at the Henry Ford
- The Heidelberg Project: A Detroit Original
- Inside at the Detroit Zoo
- The Detroit People Mover: Places it Can Move You
- If You Go: Detroit
- Shot in the Rain: Detroit
More Things to Do in Detroit
The Arab American National Museum
The Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village
Elaine L. Jacob Gallery at Wayne State University
International Gospel Music Hall of Fame and Museum, by appointment
Museum of African American History
Montreal is a great place to escape from the weather any time of year. They have so much of it – snow, rain and sweltering summer heat – that they’ve come up with some ingenious ways to stay climatically comfortable all year long.
international design and architecture with its new International Quarter that links Old Montreal with the Downtown Business District. They joined the two by suspending a new office complex right over the freeway and adding branches to the RESO (from the French réseau), the largest network of interior passages in the world. Although much of it is above ground, locals refer to it as 
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.
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.
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.