Parc Omega

About midway between Ottawa and Montreal, but more on the road towards Mont Tremblant, Parc Omega is the largest safari park for hundreds of kilometres. It’s near the Ottawa River that demarcates the border of Quebec and Ontario, so the location clearly panders to guests from both provinces.

Tickets are about 10% more expensive during peak season in summer, so my advice is to go during late spring. You can also buy a bag of carrots at the gate or the shop in the park, but you might find cheaper options at the supermarket.

You can feed the carrots to docile animals like deer, moose, and elk, but not to violent animals like wolves or bison. Don’t spend all your carrots at the first herd of moose, there are more magnificent animals along the 12-kilometre long trail. Top tip: wild boars don’t eat carrots, don’t be one of the fools that throw carrots at boars.

Parc Omega is rare in being one of the few safari parks in the world with arctic animals such as arctic fox and arctic wolves as they are indigenous to Canada. There are regular brown bears, but no polar bears. If you’re looking for penguins, this is the wrong hemisphere.

Visitors stay in their car most of the time except to access the tourist village or to hike on one of the trails. One of the longer trails is the Trail of First Nations with carvings and totem poles. There is a floating pathway on the surface of the lake, but it’s closed when the lake is frozen.

Another path leads away from the tourists village where you’ll find all the restaurants and boutiques. This path leads to the arctic wolves enclosure. Visitors walk onto an elevated walkway to look down onto the wolves at a safe distance. A staff member throws bits of meat at them to make the wolves congregate around the walkway.

Other animals include caribou, the Rocky Mountain goat, coyotes, raccoons, and turkey. But none of them are really as fun as feeding moose. My trick is to wave the carrot out the window to lure them away from other cars to you for a treat. Then hold them on the hand away from the window so they stretch their head and neck into your car and you can pet them as they eat.