Parc Oméga

Parc Oméga sits just outside Montebello, and the premise is simple enough that I underestimated it before arriving: you drive your own car along a nine-kilometre gravel route through 1,800 acres of forest and open meadow, and the animals — free-ranging within the park’s perimeter, not caged — come to you. Within the first five minutes a wapiti elk had put its head almost through our open window looking for the carrots sold at the entrance gate, and I spent the rest of the drive slightly unprepared for how close the wildlife actually gets.

The species roster is genuinely impressive for the region: wood bison, moose, white-tailed deer, wild boar, elk, and — held back from the main driving loop for obvious reasons — wolves and black bears, viewable from raised platforms and enclosed walking trails rather than from the car. We went in early winter and the wolves were active in a way I hadn’t expected, moving through the snow in a loose pack, entirely unbothered by the small crowd watching from the platform above. Lia, who has a professional wariness around anything marketed as a wildlife encounter, admitted afterward that the animals seemed genuinely well kept — enormous enclosures, natural terrain, none of the pacing-cage behavior that makes some drive-through parks uncomfortable to visit.

The gravel road loops through varied terrain — dense forest, open meadow, a section along a small lake — and takes close to two hours if you stop as often as we did, which was constantly, because something was always approaching the car.

When to go: Winter delivers the most dramatic photos — animals against snow, breath visible in the cold air — and the wolves and bison are especially active. Spring brings newborn animals, including elk calves and wild boar piglets. The park is open year-round but call ahead in shoulder seasons to confirm road conditions.