Brother Marie-Victorin, (April 3, 1885 – July 15, 1944), was a Canadian member of Brothers of the Christian Schools and a noted botanist in Quebec, Canada. He is known as the father of the Botanical Garden of Montreal. This statue was at the entrance to the Montreal Botanical Gardens.
Upon entering the grounds of this botanical garden, we were immediately amazed by its sheer size. There were ten exhibition greenhouses, 30+ thematic gardens, cultural gardens including China, Japan and First Nations, and more than 22,000 plant species. Below is the walkway to one of the thematic gardens.
It was cloudy most of the day and we were expecting rain due to the remnants of Hurricane Harvey. I took these photographs of various colors and did not even try to include the actual species. I was too busy looking at the next row.
Cathy almost got lost in the bush when she veered off the path…
…and found man-eating flowers that looked liked her jacket.
Peppers anyone?
The gardens went from flowers to vegetables, vegetables with flowers, trees, bushes, shady area plantings, sunny area plantings, etc. The amount and variety of plant species in the gardens was totally amazing.
Here is Cathy with the “Three Kings”, and me with the tall, skinny one.
Cathy was looking out on a pond, below. There were tropical lily pads that you could almost float on in the pool. I wonder where all of this goes during the winter, when it hard freezes for months.
Continuing through the forest on the was the “Heroes of the Forest” trail. We were told upon entrance that 90% of the people never make it past the halfway point. We took that as a challenge and walked the entire gardens.
This is the Monumental Dougherty, consisting of a Celtic Knot, an Architectural Folly and a Collective Piece. The artist was working on another one while we were there. I don’t really understand this type of art but it was neat.
Continuing on, were the Japanese gardens and ponds along the path. The Chinese garden was in the final stages of construction and scheduled to open in a couple of weeks.
These guys didn’t move much. They were made of paper and located outside of the Chinese gardens.
On our way to the Insectarium, we passed through this arch. It is nearly fall so most of the bloomers are gone.
After checking the map, we found that we missed the Alpine Garden, so I went back, about halfway to the other end and walked the area. It was very similar to what you would see at Silver Lake or Sonora Pass in CA. They moved a lot of earth and rock to created this exhibit.
The Insectarium offered bug meals at their cafe. Cathy did not find anything on the menu that suited her so we left hungry. They had bug tacos, bug cookies, bug this and bug that. I don’t know what stopped her.
After leaving the Gardens, we were hungry and made our way to the Little Italy and Villeray section of town. Cathy had picked out a restaurant for us to have dinner at. After searching, finding the restaurant and then finding a parking place several blocks away, we finally got to the restaurant and it was closed. It wasn’t to be but . . we walked to the Italian Market that we were told about and found a little slice of Italy!
They had cheese. Case after case after case of cheese.
They had breadsticks, lots of breadsticks, and baguettes of every type you could imagine.
This is part of their olive selection. There were too many to count and I could not make a decision.
This is Cathy at one of the deli counters. There were critters in there that I had never seen before!
The desert counter, there were several.
Cathy befriended the owner and he showed us around and explained some of the items. He was from italy and had family in Oakland, CA.
We decided the heck with a restaurant. We bought the ingredients for a wonderful Italian meal here and went back to the MH and feasted. We had enough for several meals.
The Italian market took up six full stores on the street. It was very deceiving on the outside but well-known to the locals. We are glad we found it as it had the widest selection of foods, spices, and etc. that we have seen.
Travelling with the Schinglers 