OTTAWA, CANADA—Recent excavations near some of the main buildings on Ottawa’s Parliament Hill have uncovered items and buildings left behind by the British Royal Engineers who lived there while building the Rideau Canal in 1827, under the direction of Lt. Col. John By. The area was called Bytown after him, and was designated the capital by Queen Victoria in 1858. The foundations of an early nineteenth-century powder magazine remain, in addition to a garbage pit associated with the officers’ quarters. An opium bottle, two Catholic religious medals, a pipe engraved with a beaver and another with a coureur de bois, a lice comb, a toothbrush, pottery and china imported from England, a Worcestershire sauce bottle, and a mustard jar were recovered, along with bottles from wine, beer and champagne, tumblers, glasses, and animal bones. “When you think of early Bytown, it’s often portrayed as a swamp, as a back country area, but it’s interesting to see the officers still enjoyed a gentlemanly life that was expected of them,” project archaeologist Nadine Kopp of the Paterson Group told The Star Phoenix. The officers' quarters became government offices in 1867, and burned down in 1874. To read more about historical archaeology, see "America's Chinatowns."