Thankfully the afternoon proved much more interesting than my morning walk in Montréal with a visit to the Olympic Park, designed for the 1976 Olympic Games and a redeeming feature of our visit to Montréal since it showcases some stunning modern buildings.
Roger Taillibert, a Parisian architect created the famous stadium – rather affectionately (or not!) known to Canadians as the “Big Owe”, reference to the Can$1.61bn it cost to build and only recently paid off. It makes you realise just how well London did in staging the recent Olympics. Originally designed without a roof the 56,000-seat stadium is today used for concerts and big exhibitions. After many years of debate it was decided to add a roof that could be opened and closed. To achieve this required the construction of the top half of the Montréal Tower as it is known today which incorporates a system of cables and pulleys capable of lifting the hinged roof open and shut like a cap. As I understood our guide the roof was only operated in this way on a very few occasions and is now recovered and permanently closed.
The Montréal Tower, however, is impressive! It is the highest inclined tower in the world, rising to 175metres at an elevation of a 45-dgree angle. The promotional pamphlet states that the Leaning Tower of Pisa, by comparison only has a 5-degree incline. The first 92-metre stage of the Tower is built in concrete and the 2nd stage, completed in 1987, in steel.
So how does this tower stay up? Its all to do with the relationship between masses. None the wiser – then let me explain. The upper part of the tower has a mass of 8,000 tons that is permanently joined to the concrete base which in turn has a foundation thatreaches down over 12 metres below the ground with a total mass of 158,000 tons and serves as the tower’s centre of gravity – this is causing me a huge reminiscence to ‘A Level’ Applied Maths!! Not my strongest subject, so don’t panic if you still don’t understand how the tower stands!!
Whatever keeps it up Peg and I enjoyed the 2 minute ascent to the top of the tower aboard the 2 level, glass funicular railway that can take 76 passengers at a time and has an entry in the Guinness Book of Records as the only funicular railway in the world that works on a curved, inclinedtrack. The panorama from the viewing deck stretches over 80 kms on a clear day and provides a splendid bird’s eye view of the Olympic complex with the award winning roof of the velodrome in the shape of a cyclist’s helmet – impressive but not as impressive as the London velodrome.
After a short visit to the Aquatics Centre – very reminiscent of the London centre but without the impressive wave roof we entered the ‘cyclist’s helmet’! – the velodrome having been converted to a impressive Biodome. Peg and I spent a very interesting hour strolling through recreations of steamy rainforest, freezing polar climates, the fertile forests of the Laurentian Mountains and the fish filled St Lawrence River. This Biodome just had the edge on the one I visited in Galveston USA in February of this year.
The final call on our tour was to the Jardin Botanique de Montréal. Ranked as one of the finest in the world, a truly deserved epithet for a northern city with such a brutal winter. Unfortunately we only had a short time to explore the 182 acres of gardens but if the quality of the specimens in the greenhouses were anything to go by these gardens would merit another visit.
So came to an end an enjoyable afternoon riding the funicular, spotting exotic animals in the Biodome and taking in some splendid horticultural accomplishments but I wasn’t sorry to see the skyline of Montréal recede astern as we left for a two day sail back downstream for our next port of call Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.
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