Aspects of Montreal

             We started off today by going to the Science Center of Montreal. It was a little too kiddie to be really cool, but some of the stations did talk about state-of-the-art science. Scientists have now developed an artificial heart, eyes that can give sight to the blind, etc. There was one station that if you concentrated enough, you could send enough air into this tube to lift a ball (by measuring specific brain waves)– pretty cool. Also, there is talk of brain prints, like a neural lie detector. It depends on certain waves that indicate that a memory has been evoked; thus, if they presented a suspect with certain images of info about a crime and they recognized it (because they were guilty), then their brain would emit the brainwaves indicating so. It’s kind of scary and cool at the same time.

projection on mist = hologram

Alex's brain waves sending enough air to move the ball upwards

liquid with ferrous (magnets make it spike)

            Our next stop was the McCord Museum. It had two exhibits highlighting some of the cultural heritage of Montreal. Some of the coolest parts were a real totem pole (maybe 25 feet tall) telling of the Chief’s lineage and an alleged headdress of Tecumseh.

old map - I like how distorted it is

foot muff!

Ice castle the Canadians built one year!

horn with a map carved into it

allegedly Tecumseh's headdress

totem pole

            Later, we went to McGill University to the Redpath museum, which had dinosaur skeletons, mammals, and some cool artifacts from around the world. They had a gorgasaurus skeleton, which looked like a mini t-rex and an ancient moose head with humongous antlers. They also had a cross fox (which I’ve never heard of) and a wolverine. They also had samurai armor and shoes from China that women wore who had bound feet. Some of those shoes were only 3 inches long! I can’t imagine fitting my feet into those! I also liked the McGill campus because it was very open, the buildings had cool architecture and it was gated to make it distinct from the downtown area of Montreal.  

Giant Japanese Spider Crab!!!

Gorgasaurus

Samurai Armor

shoes for women's bound feet

mummy with x-ray

dromeosaurus

giant prehistoric Celtic elk

cross fox

wolverine

            Tomorrow I board the MV Explorer, so I don’t know how often or how detailed these posts will be (probably will not have pictures). Wish me luck with my job, classes and everything! I’ll post again when I can!

Just for laughs...

do not pet the taxidermied animals...

this was in the African heritage section...

"The Bells of Notre Dame"

          Today we learned more about the history of Montreal. We started by going to La Pointe à Callière, an archaeological museum over the birthplace of Montreal. The first part of the museum was this really cool three-panelled projector screen above some of the ruins of the first settlers of Montreal (including the first catholic cemetery). We all put on headphones and chose the language we wanted to hear. It was an awesome overview of Montreal’s entire history to present day. Then we went below and saw more of the ruins firsthand. We also got to go to the top of the building and see the view of the city. There was also an underground tunnel and an entire exhibit on the history of wine. It was pretty interesting to see some of the artifacts and stories about ancient practices with wine.

original ruins - part of a Catholic cemetery

time capsules to be read in 100 years

Alex with a Gallic Soldier

top of an enormous krater for a Gallic Princess

            We went to a little restaurant to eat – it wasn’t as good as we would have liked, but it did have poutine. I have decided that poutine must be authentic Canadian cuisine because I’ve never heard of it before. It’s French fries covered in gravy and mozerella cheese – doesn’t taste as bad as it sounds – but I think I prefer chili cheese fries.

            Then we went to Notre Dame de Bon Secours, which took the cake for today. It was absolutely breathtaking. The amount of detail and immensity of scale really makes you appreciate the workmanship. Montreal is nicknamed the “City of 100 Steeples” and that’s really not an exaggeration (there are several churches just in our vicinity). The main chapel had huge paintings for the Stations of the Cross and this really cool staircase for the oratory. The altar was mesmerizing and had statues of the apostles and images from the Old Testament. In the back was a smaller chapel where everything gleamed gold and it had this large abstract piece of art. It is really worth the visit.

one of the Stations of the Cross inside the main Chapel

the Altar

the oratory

the organ

abstract art at the altar of the mini chapel behind the main one

A Station of the Cross in the mini Chapel

            Finally, we went to Chateau Ramezay, the original house of the Governor. It was cool to see the different rooms and some of the Native American outfits. It was a very nice house, but kind of felt like I was back in Williamsburg because it was colonial. I do have to say though, Ramezay paid for it's construction in full from his own money.

the music room in Chateau Ramezay

looks like New France has it's own cracked bell too...

awesome wood deco in the walls of the house

old car!

beautiful Native American dress

look how small those beds are...

Welcome to Jurassic Park!

          No, we didn’t actually see any dinosaurs yesterday but we did go on an extensive nature tour, featuring many enormous plants and bugs that made me feel like I’d walked into Isla Sorna. We decided to go to the Olympic Park area of Montreal (to the North-East of the city) and wanted to visit the Chateau Dufresne first.

 So, we find this beautiful building, walk to the front door and find that the real entrance is in the back. Once we get to the back, we find out that it is only open Wed-Sun. We didn’t think to check to see if it would be open Monday because we just assumed it would be open all weekdays (there are actually many places in Montreal that aren’t open Monday – I guess they just really don’t like Mondays). Unfortunately we didn’t get to see that museum, but it worked out in the end because we need all the time we could get for the rest of the day (almost everything except restaurants, nightclubs and grocery stores closes at 6pm in Montreal).

Fountains in front of the Botanical Gardens

           We walked across the intersection to go to Montreal’s Botanical Garden. Again, we walked up to the front door to find that the real entrance was somewhere in the back. We headed towards the back when we saw this ridiculously strange, large dog sculpture and wandered over to see what it was: 

"le woof"

Behind it was hidden my favorite part of the day, the Garden of Senses. It is a garden specifically made for people who lack a sense, so each of the plants featured were chosen because of their unique feature to some sense. So most of them had cool textures, many had amazing smells (you rubbed their leaves with your hand to get the scent = your hand became covered in different smells and plant gunk). I thought it was a great idea and really liked how you could experience different aspects of the plants (and not just looking at them as you do in other places).

prickly flowers in the Garden of Senses

The Botanical Gardens are massive, including a nine-greenhouse-chain, a Chinese Garden, Japanese Garden, Native American Garden and a tree greenhouse. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the time to go see all of it. We went through half of the green house (tropical plants and ferns) and it had some of the really large plants (trees, and many species of elephant ears) that gave it a prehistoric feel. They wouldn’t let you photograph any of it or I would have pictures for you. After, we went through a rose garden on our way to the Chinese gardens. 

Rose from Rose Garden

They were beautiful and had awesome Chinese architecture. It was really very cool.

Paper Bird in Chinese Garden

The entrance to the Chinese Gardens

Dream Lake, at the center of the gardens

We were very expectant of the Japanese garden, but it focused more on rocks and the building than the garden (they had a tea garden closed off unless you went on the tour, but we didn’t have time for that). One of the exhibits was a gorgeous paper dress a woman made –I can’t imagine how time consuming that must have been, but it is absolutely beautiful. We did get to see their bonsai garden, which was pretty cool because I’d never realized how many types of bonsai there are.

cool tree outside the Japanese bldg

paper dress

bonsai tree

weeping willow bonsai tree

super old bonsai tree

lollipop flowers (some of the same cool flowers from inside the greenhouse)

Finally, we got to Alex’s most anticipated part, the Insectarium. It was kind of aimed more for kids but it had some amazing exhibits of enormous bugs. They had quite a few live specimens, but I was hoping there would be more half and half.

mosquito caught in tree sap....echos of Jurassic Park...

beetle wall!!!

my weight in ants...

Butterfly art - won a competition

gynandromorphism - butterfly that is literally half female and half male

huge beetle

one of several butterfly exhibits

bug with yellow eyes and a red mouth

Our final stop was the Biodome, a large, enclosed dome containing several major types ecosystems and the animals found there. It was an interesting set-up because they just had a walkway through the large ecosystem with no real fence of any kind between you and the animals (except the very dangerous ones). (Which if you think about it, it’s very Jurassic Park-esque). It took us a couple minutes to find some animals, but then we saw almost all of the featured ones.

orange tamarind we think

this bird was in the middle of the walkway

egyptian ibis?

weird starfish

puffin!

 I really liked it – it was better than a zoo. It is amazing to see the creativity of God when you see the immense diversity of animals and plants.

Praise the LORD, all his works everywhere in his dominion. Praise the LORD, my soul.

                                        ~ Psalm 103:22

p.s. I forgot that I got a fortune cookie in French and it told me: Vos principes vous important plus que l’argent ou le success = Your principles are more important to you than money or success :D