Olympic Park, Montreal

Coordinates: 45°33′35″N 73°33′03″W / 45.559662°N 73.550828°W / 45.559662; -73.550828

The Olympic Park (French: Parc olympique) is a district in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, which was home to many of the venues from the 1976 Summer Olympics.

It is bound by Rue Sherbrooke to the west, Rue Viau to the north, Avenue Pierre de Coubertin to the east, and Boulevard Pie-IX to the south.

Structures in the district include the:

Adjacent to the park across Rue Sherbrooke is Maisonneuve Park, which contains the Montreal Botanical Garden (Olympic host of Athletics (20 km walk) and Modern pentathlon) and Montreal Insectarium.

Olympic Park

An Olympic Park is a sports campus for hosting the Olympic Games. Typically it contains the Olympic Stadium and the International Broadcast Centre. It may also contain the Olympic Village or some of the other sports venues, such as the aquatics complex in the case of the summer games, or the main ice hockey rink for the winter games. The Olympic Park is often part of the "legacy" which provides benefit to the host city after the games have ended. As such it may subsequently include an urban park and a museum or similar commemoration of the games that were hosted there.

The 1908 Olympic organising committee specified "As far as possible all the competitions, including swimming, archery, fencing, wrestling, &c., will be held on the same site in which the amphitheatre for the track-athletics and cycling will be erected." Not every games has a centralised complex of this type. The 1992 and 2010 Winter Games had widely dispersed venues; "Whistler Olympic Park" was the venue for the nordic skiing events in 2010. Venues of the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro will be split among four "clusters" rather than concentrated in a single Park.

Olympic National Park

Olympic National Park is a United States national park located in the state of Washington, on the Olympic Peninsula. The park has four basic regions: the Pacific coastline, alpine areas, the west side temperate rainforest and the forests of the drier east side.

U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt originally created Mount Olympus National Monument on 2 March 1909.It was designated a national park by President Franklin Roosevelt on June 29, 1938. In 1976, Olympic National Park became an International Biosphere Reserve, and in 1981 it was designated a World Heritage Site. In 1988, Congress designated 95 percent of the park as the Olympic Wilderness.

Natural/Geologic history

Coastline

The coastal portion of the park is a rugged, sandy beach along with a strip of adjacent forest. It is 60 miles (97 km) long but just a few miles wide, with native communities at the mouths of two rivers. The Hoh River has the Hoh people and at the town of La Push at the mouth of the Quileute River live the Quileute.

Olympic Park (Buffalo)

Coordinates: 42°54′18″N 78°52′54″W / 42.904946°N 78.881605°W / 42.904946; -78.881605 Olympic Park is a former baseball ground located in Buffalo, New York, USA. The ground was home to the Buffalo Bisons baseball club of the National League from 1884 to 1885. The park was located on the North East corner of Richmond Avenue & Summer Street, bounded by Norwood Avenue. Professional Baseball continued to be played here in the International League until the lease ran out on the Richmond Avenue & Summer Street location in 1888.

Prior to 1884, Buffalo's baseball teams played at an unnamed park (known today as "Riverside Park") at Fargo Avenue and Rhode Island Street from 1878 to 1884. The owner of the site, Alexander Culbert, decided to redevelop the stadium and the team left the site for Olympic Park.

After the conclusion of the 1888 season the stadium was moved to East Ferry & Michigan Avenue with the last professional game being played in this park on September 28, 1888 when the Buffalo Bisons played the Cuban Giants.

Montreal

Montreal (ⁱ/ˌmʌntriːˈɒl/;French: Montréal,pronounced: [mɔ̃ʁeal]) is the largest city in the Canadian province of Quebec. It is the second largest city in Canada and the 26th largest in the Americas. Originally called Ville-Marie, or "City of Mary," it is named after Mount Royal, the triple-peaked hill in the heart of the city. The city is on the Island of Montreal, which took its name from the same source as the city, and a few much smaller peripheral islands, the largest of which is Île Bizard. It has a distinct four-season continental climate with warm to hot summers and cold snowy winters.

In 2011 the city had a population of 1,649,519. Montreal's metropolitan area had a population of 3,824,221 and a population of 1,886,481 in the urban agglomeration, with all of the municipalities on the Island of Montreal included. The 2014 estimate of the population of the metropolitan area of Montreal is 4.1 million.

French is the city's official language and is the language spoken at home by 56.9% of the population of the city, followed by English at 18.6% and 19.8% other languages (in the 2006 census). In the larger Montreal Census Metropolitan Area, 67.9% of the population speaks French at home, compared to 16.5% who speak English. Montreal is one of the most bilingual cities in Quebec and Canada with 56% of the population able to speak both English and French. Montreal is the second largest primarily French-speaking city in the world, after Paris.

Montreal (Crusader castle)

Montreal is a Crusader castle on the eastern side of the Arabah, perched on the side of a rocky, conical mountain, looking out over fruit trees below. The ruins, called Shoubak or Shawbak in Arabic, are located in modern town of Shoubak in Jordan.

History

The castle was built in 1115 by Baldwin I of Jerusalem during his expedition to the area where he captured Aqaba on the Red Sea in 1116. Originally called 'Krak de Montreal' or 'Mons Regalis', it was named in honour of the king's own contribution to its construction (Mont Royal). It was strategically located on a hill on the plain of Edom, along the pilgrimage and caravan routes from Syria to Arabia. This allowed Baldwin to control the commerce of the area, as pilgrims and merchants needed permission to travel past it. It was surrounded by relatively fertile land, and two cisterns were carved into the hill, with a long, steep staircase leading to springs within the hill itself.

Island of Montreal

The Island of Montreal (French: Île de Montréal, Kanien’kéha: Tiohtià:ke), in southwestern Quebec, Canada, is located at the confluence of the Saint Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers. It is separated from Île Jésus (Laval) by the Rivière des Prairies.

The island is boomerang-shaped (one end pointing roughly west, the other roughly northeast). It is the largest island in the Hochelaga Archipelago, and the second largest in the Saint Lawrence River (following Anticosti Island in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence). It is the most populous island in Canada and the 37th most populous island on earth. Montreal Island is the second most populous river island in the world (behind Zhongshan Dao in China), as well as the largest population of any island in the world on fresh water.

The St. Lawrence widens into Lake Saint-Louis south-west of the island, narrows into the Lachine Rapids, then widens again into the Bassin de La Prairie before becoming the St. Lawrence again and flowing toward Quebec City. Saint Helen's Island and Île Notre-Dame are in the Saint Lawrence southeast of downtown Montreal.