MONTREAL, CANADA—Excavators have uncovered two nineteenth-century copper alloy stamps at the site of the old Parliament of the United Province of Canada, according to a report in The Star. The building was destroyed by fire during a riot on April 25, 1849. The stamps, which would have usually been kept in the Parliament’s archives, were found in areas corresponding to the office of the clerk of the legislative assembly, and the legislative council library. “The fact that it was a quick and violent fire resulted in them being left on site and rediscovered more than a century-and-a-half later,” said Louise Pothier of Montreal’s Pointe-à-Callière Museum. The fire also destroyed the two parliamentary libraries and documents dating back to the beginning of French colonization of Canada. The excavators recovered about 30 charred document fragments in one of the libraries. Scientists at the Canadian Conservation Institute in Ottawa determined the pages were minutes of the lower chamber of France’s parliament dating to 1830. For more on archaeology in Canada, go to “Discovering Terror.”
