Imagine the scene: a roadworks site like the hundreds seen every year, this one to widen Chemin de Chambly, right next to the Co-Cathedral, in 1971. Excavators dig and dig, and then… surprise: bones. And not just any bones: the 17th-century bones of the very first settlers on Montreal’s South Shore! And buried beneath Canada’s first motor road…
In all, the skeletons of 41 men, women and children were exhumed and moved to the Saint-Antoine-de-Padoue cemetery, just a stone’s throw from the co-cathedral.
Who could have imagined that roadworks would unearth a priceless secret of Longueuil’s history… buried for three centuries?