About this guide

Hi. I’m Owen Clarke. I’m a former volunteer aquarist at the downtown Toronto aquarium, six years on the backstage rota — mostly bucket-carrying, glass-cleaning, night-feed rotations. This is the guide I found myself sending to visiting friends by e-mail until eventually I put it online.

I grew up in Ottawa, moved to Toronto for work in 2018, started volunteering at the aquarium in early 2019 because I needed something to do that wasn’t a screen. Six years later I’m still there most weekends. My day job is unrelated. The aquarium doesn’t pay me anything for this site — they don’t know it exists in any formal way, though a few of the staff do.

This guide is an independent project. There’s no publisher and no sponsor. I don’t sell tickets and I don’t sell merchandise from these pages. There are no advertisements, no affiliate links, and no analytics beyond basic server logs. If you write in, I read it.

A few things this guide is not

• It is not an operator page. The aquarium’s management have not asked me to write this, and they would probably prefer some of the honest bits were softer. That’s the point of an independent guide.
• It is not a ticket seller. I’ve never sold a ticket in my life and I don’t process payments. If a page anywhere pretending to be me tries to take a card, it isn’t me.
• It is not sponsored. No brand partnerships, no paid mentions, no comped visits. The visits I write about I’ve done on my own membership.
• It is not comprehensive. I only cover the downtown Toronto aquarium. The other aquariums in the network aren’t within scope of this guide.

Why keep this guide?

Because the operator’s own website is very good at selling and quite bad at explaining what a first visit is actually like. Because for a couple who’ve saved up to bring their kids downtown for a Saturday, the difference between a booked 10:00 slot and a walk-up 13:00 queue is the difference between a great day and a mediocre one. Because the platform beside the shark-tunnel walkway is a real thing and nobody tells you about it.

If any of the practical bits change — hours shift, prices move, exhibits open or close — please tell me through the contact page. I fix things on the next slow Sunday.

Thank you for reading.

— O.C.