While helping to clean garbage from Spencer Creek, Daniel Canas stumbled on what he assumed was a murder weapon.

On Sunday, Canas was picking up garbage at the creek when he found the loaded gun — a revolver.

Underneath some wood debris and muck in Spencer Creek, between Governor's Road and Main Street, Canas found what he described as a make-up bag.

The gun was inside.

"I'm guessing it was a murder weapon. Why else would it be hidden in a bag?" he said.

Canas was volunteering with the Stewards of Cootes Watershed, a non-profit group that cleans up Cootes Paradise and the creeks that flow into it.

The group gets together once a week between 9 a.m. and noon.

Canas said they usually clean up metal scraps, shopping carts, tires, garbage, pop cans, beer cans – "you know, the usual" – but he has never found anything like what he found on Sunday.

"It's exciting … I found a turtle skeleton once, but it doesn't compare to this," he said.

Cannas said he was just going to throw the bag away, but "it had some weight to it. Then I felt what was inside and it felt like a gun."

The zipper on the mucky bag was stuck, so the 21-year-old earth and environmental science student from McMaster University put it into a bucket and took it up the hill.

He did not tamper with what was inside and informed Alan Hansell, who organizes the Stewards of Cootes cleanups.

Hansell said the organization has held more than 90 cleanups in the creeks and marshes of Cootes Paradise over the past two years, pulling out 87,000 pounds of garbage. He aims to have it completely rid of refuse by 2016.

In terms of unique debris, he says he found some bullets once, in April 2013, and two tires from a model T Ford, an intact vintage glass milk bottle, bowling balls and bowling pins.

The gun is "by far, the most exciting thing we've found."

The weapon was turned in to police station early Sunday afternoon.

Acting police Staff Sergeant Andrew Dunlop described the gun as "really, really, really old."

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"It's so old and rusted out that you can't even open it."

The Emergency Response Unit will analyze the gun in more detail on Monday to see if they can glean more information.