1965 Excavations: P. Carruthers Interview

Fade in: 1965 Excavations: P. Carruthers Interview

Peter is sitting in front of a window overlooking a park with a map of Christian Island to his right.

(Dr. Peter Carruthers, Archaeologist)

Basically what we were finding was rusty metal, and beads, and pieces of copper and what not.

Fade to b/w image of rusty metal artifacts

Fade in

Some recognisable artifacts were pipes we were getting aboriginal stuff. It was kind of a mixed bag. And the aboriginal stuff, the Indigenous pottery that we were finding didn’t really register

Fade out B/W image of pottery and stem fragments, Huron

Cause I was used to that, I was used to finding pottery on sites but it didn’t really register until afterwards what that might of meant. Like what was that stuff doing there? Were people still making pots? Was it still a culture that was making pots in 1649? And I mean this was classic Huron stuff so it was only after we started analysing the artifacts that an opportunity arose that you could actually think about what you were doing. So that was fascinating to me.

Fade out to a map of the 1965 excavations of Ste. Marie II.

The evidence in this little site of work that was going on and I was also fascinated by the Indigenous artifacts too because that was redolent to me of the people whose island this actually was.

There were things that were very redolent of the story about the Jesuits about Christianity about conversion about the relationship with the people because the idea of getting bullets, evidence of soldiers the quite a mixture of people, there were some tools there were locks, there were door latches and things like this. There was a whole assemblage of things that just talked about daily life and the people who actually worked at Ste. Marie.

Fade out: End credits.

Special Thanks: Peter Carruthers

Filming: Nicole Aszalos

Editing: Brooke Gosden