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Daniel Caron’s eyes twinkle with excitement as he recounts how he and fellow spelunker Luc Le Blanc finally managed to dig their way into a massive, naturally occurring underground cavern beneath a city park in the borough of St-Léonard one day last October.

“In the life of a spelunker, something like this happens once,” Caron said. “It was so easy to open it up. We were happy and surprised, but it was a complete fluke.”

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On Friday, Caron took reporters on a tour of what they found on Oct. 12: a 250-metre long cavern that has existed for at least 15,000 years, according to caving experts. The cavern extends behind the much smaller cave that has long delighted visitors to Parc Pie-XII on Lavoisier Blvd. near Viau Blvd.

Caron and others had long suspected there was more to the St-Léonard Cavern, which was discovered in 1812.

As a teenager growing up in St-Michel in the 1960s, Caron remembers digging into and exploring the cave at night with friends, despite attempts by local authorities to keep them out.