00:00There's a park in Montreal that feels like stepping onto an alien planet and it changes
00:06before your very eyes.
00:20When it comes to parks, Montreal is up there with New York City as having the most amount
00:24of green spaces in any city in North America.
00:28And while a lot of them are really nice for a picnic or a stroll, there's one park in
00:32Montreal that stands out in a very strange way.
00:36It's not exactly the first thing you'd expect to see.
00:39If anything, it feels like stepping on another planet.
00:43And it's got some secrets to discover.
00:45To find this otherworldly place, we'll have to head out of the downtown core and head
00:50towards the north.
00:51Here it is, Park Frederic Bach.
00:54Looks pretty normal, right?
00:56Guess again.
00:58These massive heads with hollowed-out brains staring up at the heavens are definitely a
01:03strange sight.
01:04Now get this, the empty space within each head is big enough that you could actually
01:08fit an entire human being in there.
01:11And the way they're facing up at the heavens is very alien-like, for sure.
01:16Though they look like they belong on a different world, they're the creation of sculptor Simon
01:20Guggeon.
01:21Guggeon says the idea for the statue came to him as he stood on a 240-million-year-old
01:27mountain in Africa and watched the 4.6-billion-year-old sun descend below the horizon.
01:34But these sculptures are just the beginning of what this park has to offer.
01:40This whole place is one big science lab.
01:44White pods spread out as far as the eye can see.
01:49What are these things?
01:51They're unlike any other structure in the area.
01:55Weird machine-looking things, like something out of Interstellar or Star Wars.
02:01These things are called biogas wells, and just like a regular well, they're hollow on
02:07the inside.
02:08The only difference is, instead of water, over time this fills up with gases from inside
02:12of the earth.
02:14You can actually hear the gases being collected, listen.
02:21Montreal-based architecture firms LeMay and Morelli built 250 of these spheres here, all
02:28part of the park's own renewable energy system.
02:32But why build all of these pods here, in this park specifically?
02:37This is where things get really interesting.
02:39Millions of years ago, this whole place was underwater, and it's got the fossils to prove
02:44it.
02:45But as the oceans disappeared, all the leftover dino carcasses ended up in the ground.
02:52Then in the 1950s, it was a city dump, filled to the brim with garbage for over 30 years.
03:00So the ground here has all the decomposing goodness needed for a biogas buffet.
03:06The pods swallow up all the organic matter left behind from the trash in the 1950s, and
03:12the dinosaurs that swam in the oceans hundreds of millions of years ago.
03:16From a landfill to sustainable energy, this is one of the most ambitious environmental
03:22rehabilitation projects in North America.
03:26And just as we think we have this place figured out, it starts to change.
03:31As the sun sets, something starts happening.
03:34The pods begin to light up.
03:37There is almost no light pollution coming in from the city, so it's really hard to see
03:41them on video.
03:42Now, a picture, on the other hand, captures just how it looks to the naked eye.
03:48That glowing green light you're seeing inside of each pod is the biogas collected from the
03:53ground.
03:54And suddenly, an already strange park just went supernova.
04:00There are tons of green spaces spread out across Montreal, but none anywhere near as
04:05strange or interesting as Frederick Bach Park.
04:09That's it for this episode, but I'll see you next week with another hidden place in
04:13Montreal that you're going to want to know about.
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