Quebec to celebrate 400 years with year-long fete

QUEBEC -- Danny Pelchat bounds across the square in front of Quebec's century-old parliament building, bubbling with excitement as he points to the boulevards at either end.

"There will be a parade coming in over here, another parade coming in over there. There will be acrobats coming down the buildings. There will be street performers. You can be anywhere and there will be something happening," says the famed event planner, who is in charge of throwing the biggest party this city has ever seen.

Indeed, Pelchat plans to hire more than 1,000 entertainers for the day-long outdoor "urban opera" that he is creating to mark the 400th anniversary of Quebec's founding on July 3, 1608 — the biggest event of its kind in the world, he says. And it's just one of several over-the-top celebratory events that he and others in the city are planning for the coming year.

Kicking off on New Year's Eve with Olympics-like opening ceremonies, Quebec's 400th-anniversary celebration will stretch for nearly 10 months, culminating in a Cirque du Soleil-produced extravaganza in October 2008. Geared as much to tourists as to locals, it's already propelled a wave of improvements for visitors, from spruced-up hotels to new attractions. And tourism officials hope it'll bring a surge in visitation for next year and beyond — particularly from the USA.

"Some people say that Americans take us for granted. They know we're here and they say they'll come someday, but they put it off," says Pierre Labrie, the head of Quebec's tourism office. "The 400th (celebration) is an argument for them to finally do it."

Even before planning began several years ago, the history-steeped, French-speaking provincial capital — the oldest city in Canada — was in the midst of a renaissance.

Sitting in a bistro along the rue Sault-au-Matelot, one of the many scenic cobblestone streets for which Quebec is famous, Labrie points to the Place Royale, just a short walk away. Now one of Quebec's most-visited sites, the historic 17th-century square near the St. Lawrence riverfront was virtually abandoned and in disrepair as recently as the 1970s, despite the fact that it stands on the hallowed ground where the city's founders first landed. It was only in 1999 that restoration work on the stone houses around the square was finished and an interpretive museum opened.

Established by French explorer Samuel de Champlain just a year after the English settled Jamestown, Va., Quebec (pop. 491,142) long has drawn visitors for its Old World charms, which range from citywide fortifications with ramparts and turrets — one of the rare walled cities in North America — to its decidedly (some would say defiantly) French culture.

The centuries-old stone buildings that line Quebec's winding streets are filled with Parisian-style cafes and bistros serving steak frites and foie gras — made all the more exotic by the fact that nearly everyone in them, even the other tourists, is speaking French. More than 70% of Quebec's visitors are from the surrounding French-speaking province of Quebec. (Most people in tourism jobs such as hotel clerks and waiters speak at least basic English, although bilingualism is far less common among residents than in more cosmopolitan Montreal.)

The rise of Lower Town

The city also is home to the site of one of the most important battles in the history of North America. (The British defeat of the French in 1759 is why the French-speaking province ended up part of Canada.)

But since 1985, when the city was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site, large parts of its historic center — particularly Lower Town below the walls — have been restored, expanding its allure.

At Lower Town's Hotel Le Priori, a few doors down from where Labrie is having lunch, owner Marie-Hélène Perreault says people thought she was crazy when she first opened the 26-room boutique property in 1991. Back then, most tourists stuck to the so-called Upper Town within the walls, which soars above Lower Town and is dominated by the castle-like Fairmont Château Frontenac.

"Nobody was here. All these buildings were empty," says Perreault, standing in the doorway of the ancient stone building she meticulously restored.

Now Lower Town is bustling, in part thanks to the arrival of several new museums and a new emphasis on centuries-old historic sites. Just down the street, for instance, is a plaque marking a rare moment of discord between what is now Canada and the United States — the spot where the city fought off invading Americans during the American Revolution (commanded, notably, by the soon-to-be-disloyal Benedict Arnold).

The Lower Town also is home to the revived rue du Petit-Champlain, which dates back to 1685 and is billed as the oldest shopping area in North America. And it's becoming one of the hottest places to stay in the city as a flurry of contemporary boutique properties such as the 2-year-old Hotel 71 opens in 18th- and 19th-century buildings.

Flowing toward the river

Not far from the hotels, at what's known as the Old Port, meanwhile, the city is transforming parking lots into a huge festival area for the anniversary. While events will take place there throughout next summer, the high point will come from June 20 to July 29, when organizers will project what's billed as the world's largest multimedia show on the side of the 2,000-foot-long grain silos across the harbor. Parks Canada, which is overseeing the project, also is building a three-floor museum overlooking the water that will tell the story of the people who have settled Quebec over the past 400 years.

"Everything is about bringing back access to the river," notes 400th-anniversary official Roxanne St-Pierre during a hard-hat tour of the site, which is still a maze of scaffolding and bulldozers. She points to workers installing acres of gardens and boardwalks, improvements to the waterfront designed to last beyond the anniversary. "Just turning these parking lots into gardens is a big change for the city."

As St-Pierre points out, "the whole city is under construction right now." Or so it seems. The province is spending $70 million to beautify another waterfront area just south of the city that contains a boulevard tourists use to get into the city. Where giant oil tanks once marred the vista, there soon will be thematic gardens, biking and walking trails and an observation deck where visitors can watch ships sailing in from the Atlantic.

Scaffolding also covers the city's iconic Château Frontenac, which is shoring up its century-old walls and renovating hundreds of rooms in time for the anniversary. Even Quebec's small airport is getting a $66 million upgrade that will double its capacity for the expected influx.

It's French but still familiar

Tourism to Quebec surged after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, when vacationers in both Canada and the USA looking for closer-to-home destinations saw it as a safe, easy-to-reach option. Less than a day's drive from Northeastern cities such as Boston and New York, the city experienced a 22% jump in arrivals in 2002 to 5.5 million.

But the rise in U.S. tourists turned out to be short-lived. Labrie, the tourism chief, says his city has been losing out to places such as Argentina and Spain as Americans regain their taste for foreign travel. Arrivals from the States have dropped for three straight years.

"Maybe Canada is less sexy," he muses. "Who would have thought a decade ago that Buenos Aires would be our competition?"

Travel from the USA to Quebec, like all of Canada, has been affected by the slumping U.S. dollar (last week it hit parity with the Canadian dollar for the first time in 31 years), which is making the country more expensive for Americans. But Quebecers like to point out that the French-infused city is still a bargain compared with France itself.

"It's a bit of adventure, with the different culture and language," notes Evan Price, whose family runs the city's most stylish hotel, the recently expanded Auberge Saint-Antoine. "But it's not so foreign that it's going to flip you out. You're still in North America."