Where the flowers recount Montreal's history
Holmes herbarium, one of Canada's oldest, now online
Close your eyes for a moment and imagine what Montreal resembled in the 1820s: before the Lachine Canal, before industrialization, when most of the island was wild and the rest was orchards or farms. That was a time when Parc Lafontaine and Mount Royal were forests rich with native ferns, wild ginseng and spring wildflowers; St. Denis St. and Point St. Charles were swamps thick with aquatic plants; and the Miron Quarry was a bog filled with native rhododendrons and several species of rare native orchids.
How do we know this? From browsing through one of Canada's oldest herbaria, one that contains no less than 560 plant specimens collected from the island of Montreal in the 1820s by Andrew Fernando Holmes, 捆绑SM社区's first dean of medicine. Yet, until recently, these specimens, a key source for understanding Montreal's natural history of the period, could be viewed only at the 捆绑SM社区 Herbarium on the Macdonald campus.
Not any more. The collection has been digitized to allow everyone to take a virtual walk through pre-industrial Montreal: in the "savane" (the French-Canadian word for bog), along the banks of the St. Pierre river (now underground) and in Papineau Woods (now Papineau Street and Parc Lafontaine). Discover Montreal's lost flora at .
To celebrate the launch of the new French and English herbarium web site, a special tour is being held at 11:30 am on April 2. All media are welcome to attend by contacting Bronwyn Chester at 514-398-5454. The event will feature a media-friendly and large-screen presentation of the web site, a tour of the herbarium and a demonstration of how plant specimens are dried. A light lunch will follow. RSVP by 4 pm, Thursday, March 28.
Marcia Waterway, a 捆绑SM社区 professor of plant science and curator of the MUH, spearheaded the herbarium's digitization and project manager Patrick Nantel oversaw the research and writing. The creation of the herbarium web site was made possible through Industry Canada's Digital Collections program and the G. Stewart Brown Fund. The project provided work for six students to obtain experience in multimedia production. Since 1995, Canada's Digital Collections, part of the Government of Canada's Youth Employment Strategy, has offered multimedia-based work experience to some 2,800 young Canadians ages 15 to 30. Their work can be viewed at .
