Educating us all about creatures small
This year, the Great Montrealer in the scientific sector is Georges Brossard. Mainly known as a peerless entomologist and as the founder of the Montreal Insectarium, he describes himself as “a grassroots guy, a farmer’s son.” An insect enthusiast, he also fervently loves human beings. It is with honour, respect and recognition that he accepts the distinction awarded to him.
After a productive career as a notary, Georges Brossard went hunting for insects around the world. This adventure lasted a good 20 years, at a frequency of at least six months a year.
For a person who has sought to reconcile human beings with insects by education and raising awareness, the most populous class of animals on Earth has always been part of Brossard’s life — even when he was studying law at the University of Ottawa, where he considered doing a Ph.D. thesis on bees and becoming a professor. Instead, he became a notary.
An ambassador of his country and his city, Georges Brossard has opened several insectariums in the four corners of the world.
Although he is known to have founded the Montreal Insectarium, Brossard specifies that he has done many other things. He has also created the Insectia series, which was a worldwide success for two seasons. This broadcast awakened and met a need of people all over the planet, regarding their knowledge of insects.
“This made a lot of people aware about entomology, the science that was my science — the science of insects,” Brossard said of the series.
“And it made me feel good to choose the ones that were the most hated, the most feared and the most despised.
“I have always been on the side of the little guy, the oppressed, the abused,” he added. “So I defend those causes.”
A humanist more than a scientist — He finds it funny that he is classified as scientist. After relating the different honours he has received, including two honorary doctorates of science from McGill University and the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, he declares in all honesty, and with frank laughter: “I’m not a scientist at all!”
He created the Insectarium much more humanistically than scientifically. This is the way he perceives himself and how others should see him. As such, Brossard stresses the necessity of recognizing the participation of people who have done and are doing extraordinary things.
The internationally renowned entomologist also looks after children who suffer from autism and intellectual deficiency, and those who live in disadvantaged neighbourhoods — those who, he declared indignantly, are “catalogued as rotten, poor or unproductive from the age of 6, 7 or 8.”
He added: “Give them time to live and then they will show what they can do.”
Brossard responds to this need in children, for example, by giving talks in certain schools on “motivation, awareness, awakening to a demanding world — but one that is accessible to them despite appearances.”
In his opinion, seniors should do the same, not out of nostalgia, but to provide experience and a historical reality of Quebec.
A man full of surprises — Apart from his career as a notary, entomologist and actor, Georges Brossard has also been a screen- writer. The film The Blue Butterfly is based on part of his life, when he took a child with terminal cancer to hunt the famous blue butterfly. Once the butterfly was caught, the little boy was cured of cancer.
“I have written several other scripts, big and small,” he said. “And my scripts are hardhitting. They always take good shots.”
Brossard is also an airplane pilot, which has allowed him to make the most of Quebec summers (he detests snow).
“I flew my plane, I fished for walleye, I had the life of my dreams,” he recalled. “I went fishing for at least 50 to 100 days in summer and fall. After that, I went back to hunting insects all over the world.”
Among the things he has aspired to accomplish, without ever achieving them, was a dream of becoming Minister of the Environment.
“This is a department where I would feel really motivated and capable of doing the job,” he said. He only ran for office once — “for the Conservative Party, 40 years ago”, he said — but he didn’t win.
Nowadays, he is in great demand as a speaker, with 27 speaking topics to his credit. He is also working on writing novels. Nothing has been published yet, “but it’s coming,” he assures us.
Another upcoming project is a reptilarium in Trois-Rivières. In order to rival Montreal and Quebec City, Brossard says, TroisRivières must stand out from what is already being done. He would not replace everything, “but one of the elements of rebuilding the new Trois-Rivières could start with a reptilarium.”
This has meaning to him, because it is like a return to the earth, to creatures that creep and crawl.