Olympic history

After yesterday's visit to the rowing basin I continued today on the same theme by heading to the Olympic Park.  Here the key events of the 1976 Montreal Olympics took place and many of the venues, particularly the swimming pool and the stadium, were there to visit.  The swimming pool is connected to the Olympic Stadium, and is now used as a public pool.  Had I known I would have brought my swimming things!  It is still very similar to how it was at the time of the games, only the addition of a children's play pool (which was there all the time, just under the podium) and the removal of temporary seating have changed things.  Access to the stadium itself was only through a guided tour.  The stadium is used for a variety of sports and other activities, but has no anchor tenant anymore (London, take note).  some of the seating has been removed, and it also has a roof - apparently one was always planned, but it didn't get built until 10 years after the games as a retractable roof, but that didn't work so it now has a permanent one.  It all made for a rather strange stadium experience.

Whilst it was only half there at the time of the games, the stadium complex is topped off by a viewing tower, which is the largest leaning tower in the world.  This gives views out across the Olympic park and way off into the distance through the main Montreal city and beyond.  Access is via a train which runs up the outside which is quite fun (and more spacious than the equivalent that runs up the St Louis arch!)

Also connected to the stadium complex is what was the velodrome.  I say was as the velodrome is now a biodome (that'll be why Canada only won one cycling medal in the 2012 games then (a bronze in the women's team pursuit)).  I went and had a look around - no sign of any banked track but a good selection of wildlife and plants in a number of different temperate zones.

From the stadium complex I headed over to the Botanical Gardens, which are just next to it (indeed they hosted some Olympic events themselves apparently!).  Being a sunny day it was a good time for a walk around, and as well as the plants and the themed gardens were several paper-based exhibits including a lot of colourful characters!

From here I went via a university art gallery (which took longer to find than it took to look round) to the McCord museum which had a fantastic exhibition of cartoons (focusing on their reaction to world crises) as well as a section on the history of Montreal.