Canada Guide
Alberta and the Rockies
Calgary Zoo
Address: 1300 Zoo Rd
Opening time: Daily 9am–6pm, last admission 5pm
Price: $16
Telephone: 403/232-9300 or 1-800/588-9993
Website: www.calgaryzoo.org
St George's Island is home to Calgary's most popular attractions, the Calgary Zoo, Botanical Gardens and Prehistoric Park. It can be reached from downtown and Fort Calgary by riverside path, by C-Train northeast towards Whitehorn, or by car (take Memorial Drive East to just west of Deerfoot Trail). Founded in 1920, this is now Canada's largest zoo (and one of North America's best), with 850,000 annual visitors and some 1200 animals, 400 species and innovative and exciting displays in which the animals are left as much as possible in their "natural" habitats. There are underwater viewing areas for polar bears and sea creatures, darkened rooms for nocturnal animals, a special Australian section, greenhouses for myriad tropical birds, and any number of pens for the big draws like gorillas, tigers, giraffes and African warthogs. Check out the extended North American and Canadian Wilds, Aspen Woodlands and Rocky Mountains sections for a taste of a variety of fauna. Also worth a look are the Tropical, Arid and Butterfly gardens in the conservatory. A fast-food concession and picnic areas can help you make a day of it. The Botanical Gardens are dotted throughout the zoo, while the Prehistoric Park annexe – a "re-created Mesozoic landscape" – is accessible by suspension bridge across the Bow River (June– Sept daily; free with general admission). Its nineteen life-size dinosaur models, none too convincing in their incongruous settings, are a poor substitute for the superb museum at Drumheller, and only the fossils in two adjoining buildings are of more than fleeting interest.