McGill University (April 2001): While visiting Montreal, Liz and I decided to see what we could see at local universities, even though we didn't really have any idea where to look. We struck out at UQAM, but at McGill we had the good fortune to stumble upon a wealth of nooks almost right away. At the first building we tried, which was some sort of engineering building, we found our way into a large warehousey area full of all sorts of technical projects and industrial equipment as well as a lovely elevator to nowhere in particular.

Poking around a bit more, we found stairs leading down to a some tunnels carved out of rock, leading in turn to some steam tunnels fashioned out of concrete. I imagine we must have passed through some doors that were supposed to be locked or something, because this was really much too easy. The steam tunnel system was interesting, but extremely dusty, so it was almost a good thing that it wasn't very large.
       After exiting the steam tunnels, we looked around some mechnical rooms and staff areas for a while, and then visited the upper levels of the building. Climbing out a window, we wound up on the building's lower rooftop, and from there it was just a tiny hop and climb to access the fire escape stairs which took us to the top of the school, from which we had a fantastic view of the whole campus. Of course, it being daytime, the whole campus had a pretty good view of us, too, so we left after just a few minutes. (More pictures of this expedition are available at Viewing Hole Gallery.)

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