Montreal Aquarium

The Montreal Aquarium (French: Aquarium de Montréal), also known as the Alcan Aquarium, was a public aquarium on St. Helen's Island, Montreal, Quebec. It was built in 1966 for Expo 67 and shut down in 1991.

The expo pavilion was sponsored by Alcan Aluminum Ltd., who built the site as a joint venture with the City of Montreal.

The main aquarium featured penguins and a separate dolphin pool. The pools for the dolphins were attached to the Lake of the Dolphins (Lac des Dauphins) by an underground tunnel that enabled the dolphins to perform in the lake.

After a workers' strike in February 1980, a couple of dolphins starved to death.^[1] The surviving dolphins were sold to Flipper's Sea School, a roadside dolphin attraction in Florida. The already failing aquarium received even more negative publicity.

The city planned in 1988 to move the aquarium to a more popular location at the Old Port, but the plan did not come through when the city was mired in recession in the early 1990s.

On September 15, 1991, the aquarium officially closed. Most of its exhibits were transferred to the Biodome. The site of the former aquarium now belongs to the amusement park La Ronde.

References

1. ^ (French) Dr François Lubrina. "La fin pitoyable et tragique des dauphins de Montréal". Vetérinet. http://veterinet.net/nouvelle.asp?no=228. Retrieved 2009-12-27. 

External links

• Photo and floor plan (linked)