Autumn Glows in Montréal with Gardens of Light and High-Tech Fireflies

As fall leaves turn and nights start earlier, Montréal gets brighter than ever, beginning on September 4 with the annual Gardens of Light display at the Botanical Garden. Putting on a light show of its own nearby, the Insectarium’s Bearers of Light exhibition lets loose hundreds of “fireflies.”

In its 4th edition, Gardens of Light introduces hundreds of lanterns and lights to the Botanical Garden’s striking natural setting, just minutes away from downtown. Walk along tree-lined paths and plant-covered grounds of the Chinese and Japanese gardens to discover the fauna at night in the Botanical Garden, part of the country’s largest natural science museum complex, Space for Life, also home to the Biôdome, Insectarium and Planetarium.

This year, the colourful hand-made lanterns of people and animals in the Chinese Garden tell a new a story – a compelling and festive myth about the Chinese New Year. While bright pandas climb trees and glowing boats float in the garden’s pond, a soft and subtle light display in the Japanese Garden conveys the beauty of the changing seasons, illuminating trees, waterfalls and stones. With so much to see and ground to cover, a visit to Gardens of Light can be a fun evening out for the whole family or a romantic night for two.

A few steps from Gardens of Light, the Insectarium welcomes a whole new kind of creature. Inspired by the night-time flashes of fireflies, the Bearers of Light multimedia exhibition transports us to a forest a night, turning a dark room into an interactive ecosystem where nature, art and technology meet. In reality, the “fireflies” are 2,500 lasers and specially crafted lightbulbs that visitors control with the simple movement of one finger or a grand wave of the hands.

Montréal multidisciplinary artists Maotik (a.k.a. Mathieu Le Sourd) and Etienne Paquette wanted to create an organic audiovisual show that visitors could control, much like a conductor leads an orchestra – there’s even an original soundtrack to go along with the brilliant visuals. Using our hands, we can manipulate light beams with sensors and cause sound and visual effects to emulate fireflies’ bioluminescence, from tiny dots of light to a bright explosion of motion.

And there’s even more light in the darkness at the Rio Tinto Alcan Planetarium, where a new double feature takes us on a voyage into the vast reaches of space: Dark Universe: Voyage to the Heart of Dark Matter explores the origins of the cosmos, dark matter and dark energy, and Pluto: Chronicles of an Ex-Planet shows us the dwarf planet as we’ve never seen it before.