Canada is a land steeped in culture, with galleries and museums in every city, town and virtually every hamlet.
From the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa to Jack London’s log cabin in Dawson City, Yukon, there is something to see for every taste, and a full calendar of exhibitions gives you an excuse to visit far and wide.
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
Monet: A Bridge to Modernity. 29 October 2015 - 15 February 2016
Monet: A Bridge to Modernity is the first exhibition in Canada dedicated to the famed French impressionist in almost 20 years.
The curators have gathered a dozen of the pioneering painter’s most groundbreaking pieces from around the world.
Also, until February 28, 2016, catch Mirrors with Memory: Daguerreotypes from Library and Archives Canada.
The invention of the daguerreotype, a primitive form of photograph, in 1839 was earth-shattering for 19th century Canadians and these images give some of the first sights of early Canada.
Then there is Beauty’s Awakening: Drawings by the Pre-Raphaelites and their Contemporaries from the Lanigan Collection running until January 3.
This collection of works by Victorian-era rebels who revolted against Renaissance ideas about composition and the human form are from a private Canadian collection.
Gallery admission $12 (adult) including Monet.
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
J.M.W. Turner. Painting Set Free. October 31, 2015 – January 31, 2016
Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) was an iconic 19th century British artist who produced some of the priceless artefacts of that period.
This exhibition features more than 50 works on loan from Tate Britain.
J.M.W. Turner: Painting Set Free looks at the end of the painter’s creative life, starting in 1835 and ending with his final show in 1850.
Gallery admission $12.50 (adult) includes Turner exhibition and general admission.
Jack London Interpretive Centre, Dawson City
Walk in the footsteps of legendary author Jack London, the author of White Fang and other classic works, in the centenary year of his death (November 22, 1916).
London joined the miners for the Klondike gold rush in 1897 and, like many, suffered terribly from scurvy for his trouble, losing his front teeth.
London’s battle with nature led to his short story To Build a Fire, which is said by many to be his best work.
This old-fashioned museum is devoted to the life and work of London, who tirelessly supported labour against capital. Also on site is the home where London spent his days as a miner in the Klondike.
The museum’s copy of the structure is made from some of the logs of the author’s actual cabin.
Admission: $4 (adult)
Museum of Contemporary Art, Montreal
Ragnar Kjartansson. 11 February - 22 May, 2016
Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson brings together performance, music and video in works that look into the funny and serious side of existence.
This is Kjartansson’s first major Canadian exhibition and consists of four pieces.
In the show audiences will find a remarkable palimpsest hued with both melancholy and jocularity.
The entire arc of the past of movies, music, stage and writing meanders into his video installations, presentations, drawing and onto his canvas.
In 2013, US band The National collaborated with Kjartansson on A Lot of Sorrow, a performance which led to the band playing their three-minute, twenty-five second song Sorrow live on stage, continuously, for six hours.
Admission: $14 (adult) includes Kjartansson.
Art! Vancouver
Vancouver 26 May 2016 - 29 May 2016
With Art Vancouver this picturesque city hosts a superlative artistic event in an amazing harbour-side venue.
The show features galleries and artists from across Canada and around the world.
The four-day event will be held under the Sails, at the Vancouver Convention Centre East, a venue organisers say allows enthusiasts and collectors to immerse themselves in a wide array of beautiful artwork.
The show also builds on Vancouver’s cosmopolitan and flourishing arts tableau and brings local and international artists together.
Admission: $15 (adult)
Space for Life, Montreal, QC
Surely one of the finest assemblies of state-of-the-art museums in one place.
Space for Life gives visitors the chance to see four museums: Biôdome, Insectarium, the Botanical Garden and the Planetarium.
The four museums complement each other and showcase our diverse world and outer space.
Planetarium: Dark Universe and Aurorae. November 10, 2015 - May 23, 2016
Dark Universe gives visitors a chance to travel to the limits of the cosmos and learn about the beginnings of creation and how our universe has developed.
The show also delves into the strange properties of dark matter.
Aurorae, meanwhile, looks into the Northern Lights. A knowledgeable guide takes visitors on a multimedia journey from the Earth’s core to the Sun under the Planetarium’s dome.
Allow up to two hours to see both shows.
Biôdome: Tropical Adventure. 2 December 19, 2015 - February 7, 2016
Visitors can see visit five distinct ecologies and the fauna of the tropics come under the microscope in a puppet demonstration.
Children also have the chance to get food ready for the animals and discover environments with birds, animals and fish.
The star of another show at the Biôdome, The Fossil Affair, is a 10,700-year-old beluga skeleton. The fossil was unearthed in 2001 in Saint-Félix-de-Valois and gives valuable insight into its habitat, the Champlain Sea, which was an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean created by retreating glaciers during the close of the last ice age around 10,000 years ago.
Botanical Garden:
Right next door to the Biôdome is the jewel of Montreal City, its famed Botanical Garden.
Set on 75 hectares, visitors can see outstanding gardens and a year-round program of plant displays.
The garden has a collection of 22,000 plant species from around the world.
It is home to plants as diverse as bonsai, cycads, cacti and other succulents and orchids. The site also includes 10 exhibition greenhouses, the Frédéric Back Tree Pavilion, and over 20 themed gardens.
Insectarium: September: release of monarch butterflies
With over 250,000 specimens of insects, the Montreal Insectarium has one of the largest collections in North America and completes the Living Space’s four museums.
Visitors dive headlong into a weird and wonderful universe – the insect world.
You can also meet entomologists dedicated to their passion. And kids can enjoy a fun time in the exploration zone, the BuzzGround.
Every year in September, visitors can see the release of monarch butterflies.
With its remarkable orange and black-veined wings, the monarch is one of the largest butterflies in North America.
Admission: Biôdome $19.25 (adults)
Botanical Garden and Insectorium: $19.25 (adults)
Planetarium: 19.25 (adults)
Biodôme, Botanical Garden/Insectarium, Rio Tinto Alcan Planetarium package: $33.50 (adults)
Diefenbunker Museum: Canada’s Cold War Museum
October 4, 2015 - September 3, 2017. Nuclear Family Kitchen
The Diefenbunker was built to safeguard Canada’s top politicians, soldiers and bureaucrats during an atomic exchange but now is the nation’s Cold War Museum.
The four-storey, 300-room, heavily armoured sub-surface structure was built to withstand a 5 megaton nuclear blast from a distance of 1.8km.
The Diefenbunker was named after then prime minister John Diefenbaker, and was constructed in secret at the height of the Cold War in the late 1950s and early 60s.
Decommissioned in the 1990s, the bunker was prepped to allow its complement of doomsday warriors to survive for 30 days before emerging to take over the reins of the shattered country.
The Nuclear Family Kitchen exhibition allows visitors to go back to the 1960s through the centre of the home of the nuclear family – the kitchen.
Admission: $14.00 (adults)
Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology, Drumheller, Alberta
The nation’s only facility devoted solely to palaeontology, the Royal Tyrrell owns one of the planet’s most exhaustive collections of dinosaurs.
The museum offers an educational program that allows children to imagine the prehistoric world where dinosaurs ruled.
There is also the chance for kids to make their own fossil replicas and visitors can see museum staff work on actual fossils in the Preparation Lab.
Dinosaur Hall houses ancient titans including stegosaurus, camarasaurus and the giant Tyrannosaurus rex.
The 2015 exhibit closed in autumn and the new exhibit has not yet been announced, but will open May 2016.
Admission: $15 (adults)
Fossil workshop: $10 extra per person.
To find out more about Canada and book your visit, go to keepexploring.com.au
