by MATTHEW HAYS

Myles Landry confesses to being extremely impressed with his best friend's toy collection. The 10-year-old says Toben Neidik's robots, model castles and space shuttle are cool, but what really intrigued him was the massive amount of Lego that Neidik, 11, had collected over the years.

"I had never met anyone with so much Lego," says Landry. "It was awesome!"

And one day, their mutual love of the toy building bricks and their passion for a Montreal landmark gave them an idea. Two years ago, Neidik and his mother, filmmaker Irene Angelico, made a scale Lego model of Dunrae Gardens, the school Neidik and Landry attend. The young Lego enthusiasts had another idea: what about building a scale model of Beaver Lake?

In August, Neidik and Landry began by taking a series of photos of Beaver Lake, the surrounding parking lots and lodges. "We really wanted to make sure that we captured the details," says Neidik.

With the help of their respective moms, the two lads then mapped out the landscape they were going to mould out of Lego. It helped that Landry's mother, Wendy Graham, is one of the City of Montreal's key landscape architects, and could help them figure out Beaver Lake's topography.

"In the beginning, much of the work was a bit boring," says Landry. The two model creators agree that the part that was the most fun was the attention to finer points: their model includes a wheelchair ramp at the pavilion, the bus stop, ducks, kids eating hot dogs, and even human models that represent more obese people. "Some people happen to be that way," says Neidik.

This, of course, took huge amounts of Lego. "We've ended up spending hundreds on Lego," reports Angelico. "But it's been worth it - I really think this is a tremendous project they've come up with."

Apparently, parents aren't the only people who have taken note of Neidik and Landry's ingenuity. When organizers of a colloquium on Mount Royal caught wind of the grade schoolers' Lego endeavour, they invited them to speak at their event. On May 17, Neidik and Landry will present their model to La Recherche sur les patrimoines géologique, archéologique et historique du Mont-Royal, a colloquium organized by the Friends of the Mountain and the City of Montreal. As well as unveiling their Lego model, Neidik will be discussing the history and architecture of the pavilion while Landry will deliver a talk on Beaver Lake itself.

"The great thing about Lego is that you can make anything you want out of it," says Neidik. "You can put almost anything together with it," adds Landry, "and then destroy it and make something else with it later."