is it the 40d or is it LR?

Took a few B & W with the 40d, now in LR they are color? why is that?

Does the 40 record the image in color and convert on the camera? or is LR converting the B & W to color (if that's even possible?)

well i would say its te camera recording the data with colour- are you shooting raw or jpeg.

what format are you shooting in, RAW or jpg.

the camera handles these 2 types of formats completely differently

EDIT: I don't use LR but I do use Photoshop and adobe bridge. This will be using the same RAW converter as LR. It would seem that the RAW converter ignores the B&W data attached to the RAW file. I shot an image in B&W and in RAW and then opened it in Photoshop and it opened it in colour.

Now I have no idea if this is a function of the converter or if Adobe is missing something.

JPG is fine, shot in B&W and it displays it in B&W

Every image recorded by the camera is first of all a RAW data file. If you wish the camera will then use that data to construct a jpg. At this time parameters like sharpness and Picture Style are applied, including b/w. If you choose not to make a jpg but rather export the RAW data file, those parameters are noted in the metadata section of the file. Canon software can read all the metadata and will use it for setting defaults. Third party converters can read only part of the metadata, usually only WB and basic Exif camera parameters like ISO, f/stop, speed, etc. They will use their own generic defaults but then the rest is up to you.

Most likely you are shooting in RAW with the B&W set and LR does not see the B&W tag or metadata and displays that image as color. If you opened it in DPP it would show up as B&W, but then you could go set it back to color if you wished.

If you shot a jpeg set to B&W there'd be no way to make it color again. The color data would be thrown out by the camera.