Three of Montreal's nature attractions sit together in the east of the city, near the Olympic Park: the Botanical Garden, the Insectarium and the Biodôme. With the planetarium and the Biosphère they form Espace pour la vie, the city's natural-science museum group.
Two of the three have been rebuilt since most accounts of them were written. The Insectarium was demolished and replaced, reopening in 2022, and the Biodôme reopened in 2020 after two years shut.
Some seventy-five hectares in the east of the city, and one of the major botanical gardens anywhere — though not for the reason usually given. Older accounts call it second in size only to Kew, which is not supportable; Kew alone is larger, and so are several others. Its standing rests on the collections and the research behind them, not the acreage.
It was created in 1931, not 1936, at the instigation of Brother Marie-Victorin, the Quebec botanist who had proposed it two years earlier. Money ran out almost immediately and work stalled for about four years; Marie-Victorin died in 1944, twelve years before the display greenhouses finally opened.
A point worth correcting: penjing, which older accounts list among the species in the Chinese Garden, is not a plant. It is the Chinese art of miniature landscape in a container, the practice from which Japanese bonsai descends.
At 4101 Sherbrooke Street East; Metro Pie-IX.
Everything written about this before 2022 describes a building that no longer exists. The original Insectarium opened in February 1990, closed in March 2019, and was demolished — a single foundation wall was kept. What replaced it opened on 13 April 2022, some forty per cent larger, designed by a consortium of Berlin and Montreal practices.
The old arrangement — six geographically themed zones, a wall of mounted specimens, a glass beehive and an anthill — has gone entirely, so there is no point looking for it.
The new building is a one-way route, much of it below ground, and it is built around a deliberate idea: to put the visitor inside insect perception before showing them any insects. After a walled pollinator garden and a descending labyrinth come a series of sensory alcoves — rooms that approximate compound vision, ultraviolet sight, and the world as transmitted through ground vibration. Only then does the route open into the vivarium galleries, a domed hall with a planted mound and a wall of preserved specimens, and finally a large glasshouse with free-flying butterflies.
It is a considerably stranger and better museum than the one it replaced, and the alcoves are disconcerting in a way small children enjoy more than adults.
One thing not to promise: the Croque-Insectes insect-tasting event that older accounts mention does not appear in any current programme and should be treated as discontinued.
Older accounts say it was "built in 1976 to house Olympic Games events", which is true but unhelpfully vague. It was the Olympic Velodrome, designed by Roger Taillibert for the track cycling and the judo, and it was converted into the Biodôme, opening in that form in June 1992.
It closed in April 2018 and reopened on 31 August 2020 after a thorough reworking. A dropped ceiling was taken out to expose Taillibert's concrete vaults and roof glazing, and the ecosystems are now entered through white fabric-walled corridors that deliberately strip away context before each one.
There are now five ecosystems, not the four older accounts list:
It is the one attraction in the city that works equally well in February and August, which in Montreal is not a small thing.
All three are in the east of the city around the Olympic Park, within walking distance of one another, on the green line at Pie-IX or Viau. A combined ticket covering the Espace pour la vie sites is sold and is worth it for more than one visit. The planetarium is beside the Biodôme; the Biosphère, in Buckminster Fuller's Expo 67 dome, is out on Île Sainte-Hélène and is part of the same group. General practicalities for the city are on the Montreal page.