CBC News
August 5, 2017
The National Capital Commission is inviting the public to help it dig, sift and scrape its way through the capital’s history this August as part of its annual Archaeology Month.
This weekend, and the next two after that, NCC archaeologist Ian Badgley is leading a team of researchers and volunteers to look for Indigenous artifacts on the shore of the Ottawa River at Lac Leamy Park.
“We’re at the heart of a vast continent-sized communications and trade network because of the three river basins — the Gatineau, the Rideau and the Ottawa — and their tributaries,” Badgley said from the shoreline on Saturday.
“Goods, raw materials and ideas were flowing in over long, long distances: as far away as Lake Superior, Hudson Bay, the northern Labrador coast, Ohio, Kentucky, Maine. This has been a meeting place for 6,000 years, more or less.”
The team had already found bits of patterned pottery, tool fragments and a fireplace on Saturday — on only the second day of digging.
“It’s really cool that these pieces were touched by someone from many many generations ago,” said Phil Macho Commonda, an Algonquin from Kitigan Zibi working on the site as a summer student.
“It could be my great-grandmother, it could be my great-great-great-great grandfather. My lineage is connected directly to this shoreline.”