From February 14 until April 28, the Montreal Botanical Garden will welcome thousands of beautiful butterflies and their equally attractive cousins, moths. The 16^th edition of Butterflies Go Free promises that 2000 butterflies will be fluttering about the green house at all times. You and your family can look forward to discovering over 75 different species of moths and butterflies hailing from Canada, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Kenya, Malaysia and the Philippines…

This year the Butterflies Go Free‘ spotlight is on the majestic Monarch butterflies. These butterflies are featured not only for their exquisite good looks, but because they have the longest migration in North America. They travel from Mexico in the winter to Quebec where they are spotted around June (probably heading to the Jazz Fest) and until the end of the summer. It takes 4 generations of Monarch’s to complete the trip, which usually spans about one year. And you thought you didn’t like winter.

While you’re at the Botanical Gardens, visitors can recline in the swank Monarch Lounge. The Monarch Lounge’s seats are designed like eggs, caterpillars and chrysalises. The decor was dreamed up by Quebec designer Liz Vandal, an internationally renowned fashion/costume designer famous for creating the costumes for Cirque du Soleil’s insect inspired show, OVO. From the butterflies and moths to the decor, Butterflies Go Free is a lovely way to welcome Spring in an almost fairy tale like setting.

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THE DETAILS

Butterflies Go Free, February 14 to April 28, 2013
Montreal Botanical Gardens, 4101 Sherbrooke Street East, (514) 872-1400

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(illuminated learning) Hands-on learning about how music works on our minds is at the heart of Musik: From Sound to Emotion, a cool new exhibition at The Montreal Science Centre. Every step of the exhibition’s journey is interactive – each visitor carries an MP3 player to listen to music of all kinds (including by pop-punk band Simple Plan, who collaborated on the exhibition), answer questions and create a personal composition. Less high-tech, but delightfully educational nonetheless is a visit to the Insectarium and The Botanical Gardens, where the main greenhouse is decked out for Christmas with lights, new plant life, choir performances on some afternoons, and even a craft fair December 7-9.

(glorious showtime) Lumberjack acrobats tumble among pine trees in Cirque Alphonse’s Timber!, a comedic, musical circus for the whole family, December 18-31 at Montreal’s one-and-only circus centre, Tohu. Geordie Productions specializes in creating shows for children that their parents can also truly enjoy – this year they’ve put a new twist on Robin Hood, the classic tale of do-good outlaws and their merry ways, playing December 7-16 at the Centaur Theatre in Old Montreal (453 St-Francois-Xavier). For more traditional holiday theatre fair, see Les Grands Ballets unveils its colourful annual performance of The Nutcracker, December 13-30 at Place des Arts, while Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol becomes a musical, complete with 14 songs, at Theatre Rialto on December 14.

(holiday history) A question possibly on many a kid’s mind this season: Who is the real Santa Claus? Pointe-a-Calliere Museum of Archaeology and History answers with an theatrical tour of international holiday traditions, from St. Nicholas, Melchior and Babushka to Santa Claus, throughout December – see the museum’s website for tour times. For toys and nothing but toys, visit The McCord Museum’s Toys 3 – The Voyage exhibition, where children aged 3 to 9 can travel through the adventureland of Abracadabra, where 200 historical toys are on display in wild jungles and next to crackling campfires.

(joy of art) The Montréal Museum of Fine Arts gives the gift of free tours and art activities this season: wander through an indoor forest of 35 Christmas trees, decorated in different styles, see museum’s permanent collections, kids and parents can make their own tree decorations and wrapping paper in a Holiday Decoration Workshop (Saturdays and Sundays, drop in), paint a pastel and ink landscape (Saturdays and Sundays, 1 and 2:30 p.m.) and listen to stories (in English Saturdays and Sundays, 1 p.m.). The Musee d’art contemporain also has art workshops for the family every Sunday afternoon, with a different theme each week. And traditional and contemporary art as well as plenty of craft – including all kinds of hand-made toys – that you can not only look at but buy is in abundance at Montreal’s artisanal and craft fairs.

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Culture Vultures: Right in the action of the buzzing Quartier des Spectacles, kids of all ages can create art inspired by the contemporary collection at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, while the ‘rents visit the exhibitions. Themes for fall 2012 include Voracious Colours, inspired by an expressive painting by Lise Gervais, and Rectangularity, whereby kids will get inspired by local artist Pierre Dorion’s solo show. From September 28 through 30, the Journées de la Culture take over town: three days of constant culture, whether it’s hip-hop dance classes, calligraphy workshops, face painting parties, free exhibitions of all sorts – you name it.

Musical families will be transported away in the Salle Bourgie at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, where, starting on Sunday, September 23, there’s a series of five hour-long concerts designed for inter-generational entertainment. Between 1 and 4 pm, the concerts will be followed by either an art workshop for kids, a guided tour for the whole family or a type of treasure hunt, designed to give young’ns a different perspective on the museum’s wide-ranging collection.

Mary Poppins – the musical – will be presented for the first time in Montreal from November 21 to 25, so your tots can finally see the fun in cleaning their room! The show, which took top honors on Broadway, will be presented at the Place des Arts’ Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier for eight performances only. Reserve now!

Starting on December 7, head to the Centaur Theatre for a different take on a familiar tale: Geordie Productions presents the world premier of a large-scale staging of Paula Wing’s new adaptation of Robin Hood. It promises a rollicking good time and just enough bad lessons to keep your kids healthy.

The Botanical Gardens has seen the light – this fall there are over a thousand lanterns in the shapes of princesses, peach trees, pandas and tigers in the picturesque Chinese Garden, for the 20th annual Magic of Lanterns celebration. Plus, for the first time the Japanese Garden is aglow too – in the mysterious evening atmosphere, the interplay of light and shadows in its tall tree forest creates an eerie musical happening. Check it out at dusk for best results!

History Buffs: You want history? Montreal’s got it! On September 22, from 10 am to noon, the inaugural edition of Heritage Montreal’s family workshops presents Little Burgundy: On the traces of the village of Sainte-Cunégonde, an outdoor exploration of the vanished industrial town of Sainte-Cunégonde. Guides and animators will help young explorers – workbooks and pencils in hand – and their parents follow clues to find the traces of the village that still exist today.

Meanwhile, starting in September at the McCord Museum downtown, history is in its Sunday best… so strike a pose! Inspired by the museum’s Notman photographic archives, this Sunday workshop (free to kids aged 3 to 10) invites families to blend old and new techniques to create their own photomontage.
From 11 am to 4 pm.

Pointe-à-Callière (Montreal’s Museum of Archaeology and History), located right on the spot some of the first Europeans landed in the area, is inaugurating a new pavilion this fall: the Mariner’s House. Connected to the main building by an underground tunnel, this new multi-purpose, educational space is home to the “Archaeo-Space” – a simulated archaeological dig for kids. In October and December, young and old are invited to enjoy two very special tours of the archaeological remains. Highlighting two of the year’s most highly anticipated celebrations, the museum is presenting Jack O’Lantern and Who Is The Real Santa Claus? On these two whimsical tours, children will meet colourful characters who will explain the origins of Halloween and Christmas. Which brings us to…

Thrill Seekers: Halloween is second only to Christmas on most kids’ excitement-o-meter, and in Montreal we love to celebrate our ghoulish side. Starting at the Botanical Garden, where pumpkins, a witch and her black cat are all waiting to haunt you and yours. This is the 25^th anniversary of the Great Pumpkin Ball, featuring the wackiest pumpkin designs imaginable! Visit the exhibition between October 6 and 31, and remember to enter your own masterpiece in the pumpkin-decorating contest by October 14.

During the Halloween FrightFest at La Ronde, Montreal’s amusement park becomes home to zombies, vampires and giants rats. Dare to enter the Haunted House, also known as Dr Von Terror’s clinic, or hold your breath on over 40 rides and attractions – there’s something for kids of every age, plus plenty of thrills for mom and pop. From October 6 to 18.

From now to November 4 at the historic house right next to the Olympic Stadium, Château Ramezay, there’s an exhibition in the Governor’s Garden where gourds get some glory! While the pumpkin rules Halloween, there are a slew of other squashes out there that deserve their fair share of love. From your plate to beauty products to musical instruments, squashes have been used in a million different ways for millennia – they were even cultivated 5,000 years ago by Native peoples right in this spot. Now that’s a tasty morsel of history.

What would fright night be without the ritual of the Rocky Horror Picture Show? Get your dry toast, toilet paper and rice ready and give your older kids a fun time to remember on October 26, 27 or 31 at the Imperial, a beautifully restored historic cinema right next door to the Quartier des Spectacles.

Movers and Shakers: The TOHU is known as a place where things move and shake – it’s home to tons of circus performances, dance and theatre. On October 7, starting at 8 am, it’ll be the site for a race! Adults can run either 5,5, or 11 kilometres around the St-Michel Environmental Complex, during which your tots aged 2 to 12 will burn through some of their excess energy too on a more reasonable 1 km track. Discover a cool part of town in a new way.

Right nearby you’ll find the Le Taz, a skateboarder and rollerskater’s paradise. Opening at 10 am on weekend and 3 pm weekdays, this indoor centre presents a skatepark on one side – a gigantic obstacle course of bumps and half-pipes for skaters and BMXers – and a roller derby track on the other, where Montreal’s teams practice and where skaters of all talents levels and ages can skate to music on weekends from 1 to 6 pm. Both skates and boards can be rented on the spot, and lessons are available.

The climbing center Allez-up just reopened in a brand new location on September 6! Check out the new digs right by the famous Redpath silos in Old Montreal, where big and small can climb the walls, literally, all the way up to the mile-high ceiling and over all sort of weirdly shaped installations. Courses available.

Kids bouncing off the hotel room walls? That’s why La Récréathèque was invented! This activity centre in Laval offers an arcade, bumper cars, laser tag, and activities of all kinds, including a huge playground for kids 6 months to 10 years old called the Bananazoo that has a new giant maze, a mini-train ride and a special area exclusively for children under 4.

Critter Lovers: Montreal’s Biodôme holds countless treasures, but these days the cargo’s even more precious. Last spring saw the birth of the Biodôme’s first baby lynx! Bring the whole family to watch it play hide and seek, learn to climb trees and leap from rock to rock like any other kitten. It’s also a great chance to explore the Laurentian Maple Forest ecosystem yourself, without even leaving the city.

The Insectarium, right next door, also offers some natural wonder, though acrobatic spiders may not rank quite as high on the cuteness front. Remains that your tots – especially of the boy variety – will be amazed by the spiders; they’re true tightrope walkers and aces at lassoing, sprinting, weaving and tagging. Wait, maybe this should have gone into the Halloween section…

The Ecomuseum Zoo houses over 155 species native to Quebec’s St. Lawrence Valley under one roof, just a hop, skip and a jump out of downtown, on the western tip of the island. Operated by the St. Lawrence Valley Natural History Society, a not-for-profit organization that focuses on education, research and applied conservation, the zoo offers all-day classes on animal care for kids aged 7 to 12 on September 23 and October 21. Who wouldn’t want close contact with arctic foxes, black bears and spotted turtles? There are tons of other activities to check out too right here.

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Or at least into the Japanese Garden. For the first year ever, the serene space designed for reflection is joining the Jardins de Lumière theme and turning on the lights. You can’t miss the Japanese Garden: the exhibition house is lit up in a changing rainbow of colours. Step in and through into the back garden, and that’s when the show really begins: the tall pine patch has been set alight with dramatic spots that shift in time with a contemporary music piece. Take a spot on a bench, and soak in the beauty. (And don’t miss a feast on September 16: starting at 2, there will be complimentary tastings of traditional home cooking in the garden itself.)

Down the garden path – literally – at the Chinese Garden, they’ve become absolute experts and lively lantern decoration over the last 20 years. The amazing thing is that every year is different, with whole new lanterns built around a new theme. This year is spectacular: there are over 1,000 lanterns, all designed here in Montreal and then built in China, illustrating the goddess Xi Wang Mu, the Goddess of Immortality, and her Feast of Peaches. The peaches of immortality only ripen once every 3,000 years, so there’s cause for celebration! That’s why from Wednesday to Sunday starting at 6, visitors can partake of Chinese sweets.

With a cup of jasmin tea and a sweet bean cake in hand, wander the meandering footpath around the pond, set ablaze in a million colours. The delicate silk lanterns feature panda bears, horses, tigers, the magical peach trees and the queen and her consorts: the central tableau, set in the middle of the beautiful pond, is the moment when Xi Wang Mu stole a rare pearl. Legend has it that a dragon and a phoenix once found a sparkling pearl. Xi Wand Mu became so obsessed with the gem, she ordered her subjects to steal it. On the day of the feast, the goddess revealed her new acquisition – a terrible mistake! The pearl’s blinding light alerted the phoenix and dragon, who decided to regain their treasure. In the ensuing battle, the pearl fell to the ground and turned into a magnificent lake: West Lake in Hangzhou, today a Chinese national treasure. Every evening at 6, visitors can take a guided tour of the garden to hear this story and more.

And on special nights, the visual enchantment is enhanced with live music: Chinese percussion animates most Tuesdays evenings starting at 6 p.m., and erhu – or Chinese violin – performances take place on September 15, 22 and 29 and on weekends throughout October, at 6:30 and 9. Let music light up your nights!

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THE DETAILS
Jardins de Lumière, September 7 to November 4, 2012
At the Botanical Gardens (4101 Sherbrooke E., 514-872-1400)

Photos: Susan Moss

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