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What Building Stones Tell Us
Walking Tour, 2006

Photos courtesy of Arlene Scher
Paw prints in brick
"The Adventure of
the Cat's Paw"
(Print left by the brickmaker's cat as the bricks dried.)
Several of our members gathered for an adventure in and around Montreal's Sherbrooke Street, searching for clues to the deep past and seeking to solve the mysteries of the Creatures in Stone and the Paw Prints in Brick. In other words, we gathered for the What Building Stones Tell Us walking tour led by McGill University's Ingrid Birker, an interesting exploration of city buildings, their structure, and the evidence of past life (both fossil and more recent) visible therein.

Members on the tour
We take note of the McGill buildings.

Paw prints in brick
"The Adventure of
the Creature in Stone"
(Cephalopod fossil in limestone.)

Members gather

Members and friends gather for the tour
in front of McGill's Redpath Museum.


Ingrid Birker demonstrates Tour leader Ingrid Birker, Redpath Museum Paleontologist, tells us about the architects of the Musée des Beaux Arts' original building, and the marble they used for it.

Shell fossil in limestone

Somewhere in here (arrow) is the fossil of a broken shell, seen edge-on.






Our Sovereign, peering intently,
wonders "Where? Where???"

Our Sovereign

Two members talk

Two members (or is that Holmes and Watson?) discuss the mysteries raised by what we've seen on the tour, while walking around the reflecting pool at the Collège de Montréal.

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