Québec City Celebrates 400 Years

For the adult reading along

A little more to discover

In 2008, Québec City celebrated 400 years since its French founding, the Habitation of 1608. That anniversary does not mark the beginning of human or Indigenous presence there. The festivities included hundreds of activities. Among them, Robert Lepage’s Le Moulin à images projected the city’s history onto the grain silos of the Louise Basin. The official report records more than 600,000 spectators over its 79 performances in 2008: that is cumulative attendance, not necessarily that many different people.

The scene invents a small neighbourhood party with a musician and a family; it reproduces no official show. With your child, tell apart the old event and the party held long afterwards to remember it. An anniversary looks at the past from the present, and lets us ask which stories we choose to tell together.