Canadian Museum of Nature
 Visiting
Ottawa, Canada's capital? The tour of the parliament buildings,
except for the changing of the guard, may leave your kids
cold. The visit to the art gallery may leave you embarrassed.
My three year old screeched from her stroller, "Mummy.
Look! All the ladies are nukkid (naked)" The hours at
the Nature Museum will speed by.
The building itself is an interesting Victorian
example of the work of immigrant Scottish stone carvers, check
out the marble animal heads at the beginning of the banisters..
Each of the four floors contains theme galleries.
On the main floor, to the left, is the Earth exhibit which
contains some marvelous dinosaur skeletons. To the right,
the museum mounts a different special display each year. In
the past we have learned about dinos in more detail, monarch
butterflies, and this year, the Arctic. All the exhibits are
interactive and usually work.
What makes this museum an absolute favorite?
The Creepy Critters on the third floor. A whole gallery of
live spiders, rats, cockroaches, dung beetles(with
dung), snakes and new this year, an aquarium of small sharks.
On the fourth floor, living bees buzz in a cutaway of their
hive.
Another popular section, one that bores me to
tears, not to mention the sadness of it, is the museum's collection
of stuffed animals mounted in dioramas of their environment.
Canadian birds, bison, mountain goats, wolves, cougars, even
bats, stand frozen in time. Drawers pull out to reveal trays
of bird eggs and a pole in the rest area plays various bird
songs. Not the place for a militant animal rights buff, but
fascinating for kids who want to know what wild animals look
like close up.
No visit to a museum is complete without the
gift boutique. My kids depress me with their gift shop anxiety.
The whole of Sea World or Universal Studios before them, and
they want the junk shops. Right now. I'm tough. No shopping
until the end of the visit.
The boutique at the Nature museum carries such
educational things as bug boxes, bird houses, puzzles,dinosaur
kits, as well as the usual cheap rubber animals and stuffed
toys.
The museum contains a not bad snack bar in the
basement and plenty of well labeled washrooms. There isn't
a diaper changing shelf, but the first floor women's has a
long vanity with a sink. I haven't seen a breast feeding room,
but I saw a woman feeding her baby right beside the entrance
and nobody cared. Better not! There are lots of nooks
and crannies with comfortable seats for nursing mothers or
tired grandparents.
Wheelchair accessible with a lift from the entrance
to the main floor and roomy elevators. Many of the interactive
exhibits are also accessible.
Admission: $12 Canadian for family, the
best deal. Thursdays: half-price, 5 to 8 p.m., FREE.
Hours: May to Labour Day, 9:30 a.m. to
5 p.m. Thursdays, until 8 p.m. Open Mondays May to mid-October.
Site: http://www.nature.ca
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