Bow Habitat Station – Fish Hatchery

Location:     Pearce Estate Park

East of Inglewood – 1440-17A Street SE

Gordie’s review (4 years old): “What was the best part?” “Seeing the fish!”
Nicky’s review (13 months old): ish! ish! (Fish)

Day Pass Cost:  See website for rates
Parking: free parking lot
Food Services: There is a small cafe inside the Bow Habitat Station that may be open seasonally.

Age Range: All ages.
Stay Length: 1 – 2 hours

Overall: This was our first visit to the Bow Habitat Station. The main floor has a seasonal cafe, gift shop and access to the fish hatchery tour. The 30 minute tours of the fish hatchery run twice a day at noon and 2pm (Tuesday-Saturday). We had to take Nicky back home for her afternoon nap so we skipped the tour this trip.

To enter the interpretive centre itself, you either have to go up a floor or down. Downstairs there is an aquarium area and upstairs are other kinds of exhibits.

The aquariums feature fish that live in the various habitats in Alberta.

When you push the buttons the corresponding part of anatomy on the fish model lights up.

Nicky loved seeing the fish swim around.  It’s not a huge space, just a large room but the kids both really enjoyed it.

The tanks are set up to represent different fish habitats and the fish that live in them. I thought the layout of that was really interesting.

The interpretive centre is on the upper floor.

I’m not sure what I expected to see, but I was really surprised at how pretty the displays were.

There is lots of opportunities to read and learn, as well as a ton of interactive features too.

There is also an overlook where you can see into the fish hatchery.

They have some cute photo ops too. Gordie was a little short for this one.

Gordie thought the canoe that you could sit on was pretty cool and loved the activity with the blocks too.

Most of the different sections had one of these – you turn the blocks to make the correct animals. Gordie did every single one. He thought it was really funny to make them intentionally wrong too.

This was another one of the cute photo ops. You can flip the pages of the giant ‘book’ to provide different back drops.

Although probably best suited to kids in elementary school my family had a great time. The displays offer engaging experiences for kids of a wide variety of ages and even small babies will enjoy watching the fish swim in the downstairs aquariums. 

Just outside, you can also try out fishing in the kids can fish trout pond – fishing pole rentals are available for $5 (adults helping kids require a fishing license) and check out the interpretive wetlands at Pearce Estate Park.