Prehistoric quarry dates up to 4,000 years

The eastern part of the mountain has another path worth exploring, one that winds through an area used thousands of years ago by Indigenous people.

Squeezed between Mont-Royal Blvd., Camillien-Houde Way and the Mount Royal Cemetery, are the Outremont Woods.

Not to be confused with the Outremont Summit, which is on Mount Royal’s north flank, the woods are a dense, peaceful forest with an 800-metre gravel path for cyclists and pedestrians, as well as several narrow dirt paths for walkers.

The two entry points for the main path are on Mont-Royal Blvd. at McCulloch Ave. in Outremont, and another just north of Camillien-Houde in Plateau Mont-Royal.

In the 1990s, researchers discovered the remains of a prehistoric quarry here, believed to have been in use up to 4,000 years ago.

“They found parts of tools and items that were used to create tools,” said Jean-Michel Villanove of Les amis de la montagne. “It’s here that you find the oldest traces of the presence of Indigenous people on the mountain.”

Signs “that stone was extracted and broken up here and the discovery of stone flakes and tools at various stages of completion indicate that the natural quarries on Mount Royal were used as sources of raw material and workshops for the production of stone tools,” a city inventory of archeological sites says.

“The presence of Mount Royal (rocks) in the form of tools and flakes at many sites in southern Quebec provides indirect evidence of how widely the Mount Royal quarry was used.”

Don’t expect a marker telling you where the quarry was found; the city doesn’t want scavengers pilfering valuable relics.

A city document indicates the area of archeological interest: the southern section of the woods, between the path and Camillien-Houde.

The Outremont Woods are cut off from the rest of Mount Royal Park. The city has long talked about linking this forest to the park via a pedestrian/cyclist bridge over Camillien-Houde.

A bridge here once passed over the tramway line that used to take riders up the mountain. It was demolished when the tramway was withdrawn and the line’s route was used to create Camillien-Houde Way for car traffic. The road opened in 1958.