Sure we all lo-o-ve Montreal! It's a charming place with smoked meat and a hill. But don't forget the dolphins! We got these guys up here and put 'em in an aquarium. Then came a labour dispute and city workers allowed these brain fishoids to slowly die of starvation. This is one of them. So, remember your sweet moments in Montreal but also remember the madness and evil and callous sense of entitlement that also makes us unique.
Click here for my much-more complete take on this murderous aquatic fiasco.
And when they closed the Aquarium years later, I
ReplyDeleteseem to recall that while they found places for
some of the fish, some were just destroyed. A
shark comes to mind, though I can't remember if
I'm misremembering. It wasn't carelessness, it
was that they were unable to find new homes for
the fish, and they weren't all moving to the
Biodome.
Of course, there was talk for a while of putting
Beluga whales in the Biodome, which luckily was
squelched really early, and certainly the dead
dolphin issue was raised as reasoning against
it.
The odd thing was one reason they used for
justifying the closing of the Aquarium was that
it was in a bad location. Yet no sooner does it
close, but they open the Casino on Ile Notre
Dame, and hence caused a steady stream of traffic
over there.
I noticed Kate had a mention this past week about
the Planetarium moving, something that hasn't been
mentioned in some time. Each time I hear about
that, I can't help but wonder if a move would
devalue the place the same way moving the Aquarium
into the Biodome did. It seems like in trying
to "jazz things up" we lose the core things.
I went to the Biodome a couple of times in its first
year, and found it was too crowded, too much like
you had to move with the crowd on to the next
location. Maybe that's changed with time, but I've
never gone back. Oddly, I did go to the Aquarium
more than a few times in its later years.
The Biodome is neat in itself, but it's no substitute
for the Aquarium, since the fish there are incidental.
I was thinking of places a friend could take her two
year old recently, and I immediately thought of
the Aquarium, with all those fish darting about
it just seemed like a good source of stimulus for
the young. But that's not going to happen.
But of course, the Biodome is more like a zoo,
and it's been a long time since the Lafontaine
Park Zoo was closed.
Michael
Elsewhere on the site we have a detailed history of the dolphines, their names, the whole shebang, search the site and you'll find everything you never wanted to know about the subject.
ReplyDeleteI have first haaccount of what happened to the dolphins. My father was one of three dolphin trainers. My father personallrr
ReplyDelete