MONTREAL - A nondescript brown warehouse filled with old barrels and rickety pallets is an unlikely site for the spiritual heart of a city.
Yet beneath the worn cement floors of one such warehouse lies what archaeologists believe are the first permanent buildings of the settlement that became Montreal.
"This is where the Montreal adventure began," says archeologist Sophie Limoges, pointing to a large hole in the warehouse floor.
Limoges, who works for Montreal's Pointe-a-Calliere museum, is in fact pointing to the remains of Fort Ville-Marie, the lost, original French settlement in Montreal.
The fort was built in 1642 and housed as many as 50 early colonists including Montreal's founder Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve and nurse Jeanne Mance. It would have been a key meeting place for aboriginal allies as well as the administrative heart of the colony.
But the exact location of the fort, which was eventually abandoned, has baffled historians since the 19th century. The most recent record of the fort dates from 1683.
Archaeologists got a break in the case when in 1989 they discovered the city's first French Catholic cemetery underneath what is now Pointe-a-Calliere - Montreal's archeology museum.
"When we discovered the cemetery we knew we were close," Limoges says.
In 2002, the museum began digs in a nearby old maritime warehouse, acquired with the help of municipal and provincial governments.
The digs, which helped spur the Universite de Montreal to create an urban archeology program, immediately began to reveal signs of human activity from the 17th century.
With the help of students from the university, researchers found remains of a well, an outbuilding and a masonry structure.
Digs conducted earlier this summer revealed a forge, a large pit and a number of artifacts which have allowed archaeologists to confirm what they had long-suspected, the nondescript warehouse in Old Montreal was sitting on top Fort Ville-Marie.
Along with finding the elusive location of the fort, the digs have provided archaeologists with a wealth of artifacts from the early 17th century as well as subsequent periods.
An 18th century hat pin, lead hunting bullets and aboriginal pipes are among the trove being stored in an old foreman's office above the warehouse.
"To many people these are just fragments," says Pointe-a-Calliere's head of collections, Suzanne Lachance, as she points to rows of carefully catalogued artifacts.
"But for us they're full of emotion because we always see the human behind them. They're not just artefacts, there's a person who made it, who traded it, who broke it."
The discovery of the Fort Ville-Marie site ultimately raises more questions than it answers. Pointe-a-Calliere's archaeologists are still unsure of the fort's exact layout and how it evolved during its 33 years of existence.
Only about one-third of the warehouse site has been excavated and the museum plans to continue excavating the site over the next several years.
As for Limoges, she is optimistic that future discoveries will be able to sustain the interest caused by the fort's discovery.
"Fifteen years ago, people didn't know much about Quebec's archeological sites," she says.
"We looked abroad to what they were doing in other countries, the pyramids in Egypt or Mayan ruins. Yes those are spectacular sites but we in Quebec also have very interesting sites that testify to our past."
Earlier this year the City of Montreal announced it was spending $200,000 to determine sites of archeological interest outside Old Montreal, a move that was greeted warmly by the archeological community.
"It's important to value these sites, to protect them," Limoges says. "Everyday there are archeological sites that are destroyed, and so every day part of our memory is erased."
