Abstract

The Montreal Botanical Garden, a 180-acre complex comprised of over thirty outdoor and ten indoor landscapes located in the city's east-end, is the product of a Depression-era government funded Public Works project. Its founding director, preeminent botanist Frère Marie-Victorin, drew from and expanded upon four hundred years of western botanical studies and garden planning to realize the Garden. In this thesis, the factors which inspired him, particularly his perceived need of such an institution to fulfill the purposes of popular botanical education for the masses through attracting and instructing local and foreign visitors, and the provision of a place where people could commune with nature, are explored. In recent years, the function of the Garden as a tourist mecca has surpassed Marie-Victorin's original aims. The construction involved in creating "natural" and "cultural" spectacles is investigated in order to comprehend the extent to which this widely acclaimed and advertised sight/site reflects its ideological and physical locus within the city's urban fabric and history.