This small collection is situated in the Montreal Botanical Gardens. The Botanical Gardens themselves are fantastic and apparently the second largest in the world (not sure where the largest are?). You can purchase a combined ticket for the Gardens, Insectarium, Montreal Biodome and the Planetarium (both at the adjacent Olympic Park) for around $50 CAN. Pretty good value. The Insectarium itself occupies a small purpose built building on the Gardens grounds and is part live collection, part museum with lots of mounted specimens. The live collection covers arachnids, myriapods and crustacea, as well as insects, with an emphasis on stick insects and phasmids, contained in naturalistic enclosures over two floors (actually some of the largest enclosures for invertebrates I have ever seen in some cases......I have seen birds in smaller enclosures than some of the stick insect enclosures!!). It is far from huge and can be viewed in detail in an hour, so lots of time to spend in the rest of the Gardens!!
Hi SL No construction at the Biodome on my visit.....everything open and viewable. Biodome photos will be next batch to be uploaded.
The Biodome and the Insectarium are part of a $45 million redevelopment but I just found a news article that declared that most of the Biodome animals will be sent away next year and the facility will then reopen in 2018. The Insectarium will undergo its transformation at a slightly later date and reopen in 2019. It sounds as if you got to visit the establishments just in time before they begin closing sections down...and now you'll have to go back in 2019 when both "zoos" are complete.
