Still green behind the ears in 1975, a young Rudy and three buddies decided to simulate life in a longhouse to help identify charred wood. They built their narrow, single room building — the earliest form of permanent structure in many cultures. They then lit a fire.

Rudy and his colleagues didn’t use insulation; natives would have had hung furs on the walls of the longhouse. However, the young archaeologists still successfully managed to bring the temperature inside the longhouse from a bone-chilling -13C to a more comfortable 13C. What they didn’t count on was proper ventilation. The 18-foot high longhouse gradually filled with smoke. The only place to avoid the billowing bursts of toxic black cloud was a couple of feet from the ground.

“My lungs burned. I didn’t last long. So much for the longhouse experiment,” said Mr. Fecteau with a laugh. “I had to get out of the smoke.”

And then there was the time more recently when Mr. Fecteau was asked to examine material from the grounds of what is now Redeemer College University in Ancaster. Under his microscope, Mr. Fecteau painstakingly discerned at least a dozen different types of trees were burned on the site by our enterprising ancestors. The charred wood fragments were primarily from maple and beech trees, and pieces remained in tact from the 14th century. Quite a find indeed.

Mr. Fecteau will share these and other interesting tales of his work when the Friends of the Dundas Library hosts a presentation on March 29 at 2 p. m.

Now retired from stints with the Royal Ontario Museum, the Museum of Ontario Archaeology and various Ontario government ministries, Mr. Fecteau looks forward to sharing his knowledge about plant and animal remains that can reveal what life was like for our ancestors.

Now free from the daily grind of the workforce, Mr. Fecteau hopes to do more speaking engagements for

groups of all ages, including students. He also wants to start publishing more extensively to share his knowledge with the public, his colleagues and students.

“In another 10 years, it will be 40 years that I have been doing what I love doing, and I want to pass that on in some way.”

Along with completing jobs for the ROM and government ministries, Mr. Fecteau has worked independently for over 30 years analyzing plant remains. Archaelogists from across Canada send him material from their sites, either pre-historic or historic, for analysis.

With some samples as small as a millimetre in length or weighing less than a gram, Mr. Fecteau can make a dent in determining what life was like thousands and thousands of years ago.

Stains in soil may indicate a palisade or large fence around a village; seeds not native to the area seem to show a trading network; fragments of rice might mean a small hole was created, rice placed inside then ground by stepping on it. For some, it may seem like just a petrie dish filled with particles. But on closer analysis, and for archeologists like Mr. Fecteau, the material provides the knowledge to open the doors on the past.

“When I get a petrie dish, and start examining and determining the type of materials, whether berries or charred wood, I start writing my report in my mind, and I start picturing the environment surrounding this group of people,” said Mr. Fecteau. “It could be from 5,000 years ago, and I find that exciting.”

Mr. Fecteau’s March 29 presentation will focus on three archeological sites in Ancaster — the 2,000-year-old Miller’s Pond area, Shaver Knoll, which contains material more than 4,000 years old, and the Redeemer site.

The Dundas Public Library is located at 18 Ogilvie St. in downtown Dundas. The Friends of the Dundas Library is a volunteer organization that brings together people who want to help the library, acts as advocates in support of the library’s goals, assists and liaises with library staff in services delivered and conduct fundraising activities.