We were going to climb Mount Royal today (the mountain from which the city is named) but it was hot and we decided the effort may have been a bit much after the last two days so we returned to the Olympic park to visit the Insectarium, which we overlooked yesterday.
I visited this place with Jim when I was here 11 years ago, but the place has changed quite a bit. It’s a small museum/zoo dedicated to insects with only a few displays, but the quality of what they have is very high. After a walk through a simulation of an anthill, you enter a large dimly-lit circular room with dozens of displays of mounted insects, and it was mesmerizing.
The top row of displays were sorted by colour, from white to brown through the entire rainbow, and the bottom was sorted by category (size, wings, long legs, camouflage etc). It was fascinating seeing the incredible variety, and there must have been thousands of different insects in total. Our favorites were the metallic bugs and iridescent butterflies, which in some cases looked like they were fashioned of precious metals or gems!
As beautiful as the insects in this room were, the fact remains they were all dead. This made the next section – a massive butterfly ‘house’ – all the more impressive.
This was a large space with hundreds (thousands?) of butterflies. Everywhere you looked there were butterflies flying, sitting on a leaf or eating from a fruit buffet. There were dozens of species and sizes, and they even had pupae on display since they breed some of the butterflies on location. On average they live for only a month, and they track the lifespans by keeping track of individual specimens via stickers attached to their wings (bottom right in above pic).
While the Insectarium was small and (possibly) overpriced, I’d say it was worth it for the butterflies alone, especially if you’re a fan.
In the afternoon we explored some more of the Underground City (the above was part of a large fresco we found in a dead-end corridor), did some more shopping and ate some delicious food. And yes, that includes poutine, although you can guess which of us declined to sample that famous Canadian speciality!