Georges Brossard
Georges Brossard, (February 11, 1940 – June 26, 2019) was a Canadian entomologist and founder of the Montreal Insectarium. He died on June 26, 2019 at the age of 79. Biography. An insect enthusiast from a very early age, Brossard held a career as a notary until the age of 38. He then started to travel, and on his travels studied the insects he came across with deep interest. In 1989, after having collected over 250,000 specimens, he solicited the then mayor of Montreal, Jean Doré, to open an insectarium. He and Pierre Bourque, then director of the Montreal  Botanical Gardens, began a partnership to govern and operate the Montreal Insectarium. Brossard has founded four other insectariums across the globe, some of which are located as far as Shanghai and South Africa. Since the opening of the Montreal Insectarium, his collection, which he continued to amass through his travels, has grown to over 500,000 specimens. Brossard wrote and directed 20 episodes of "Mémoires d'insectes" ("Insect Diaries"), and was the creator and host of the televised series "Insectia". He was the cofounder and copresident of Montreal's Cinéma IMAX les Ailes. In 2004, he was the subject of the fiction  film "Le Papillon Bleu" ("The Blue Butterfly") directed by Léa Pool, based on an event in Brossard's life which occurred in 1987. Working for the Children's Wish Foundation of Canada, Brossard traveled to South America with a boy in the terminal phase of cancer. It was the boy's dream to catch a mythical blue morpho butterfly, which Georges went to great lengths to find in the vast jungles, even putting his and the boy's lives in danger. They finally catch the butterfly, and upon returning to Québec, the cancer which had been slowly killing the child  miraculously receded. Georges Brossard died on June 26, 2019, at the Victor-Gadbois de Saint-Mathieu-de-Beloeil palliative care centre. He was 79 years of age. He had been admitted to the facility on June 18, suffering from lung cancer.