Old Town School – On The Road
Dispatches from the road from our wayfaring travelers.
Théâtre Petit Champlain
After walking down about 200 stairs from Vieux-Québec (Old Quebec) to the Quartier Petit Champlain, Jimmy and I had our first meeting of the day with the folks from the Théâtre Petit Champlain. The hall is the oldest concert hall in Canada where they present music in the fall and winter and plays in the summer (no one wants to present music in the summer here because the city has so much free music in the summer, no one can compete). The new mayor of Québec wants Québec to be a center for emerging artists and, as a result, the Petit Champlain has an artist in residence program that takes on 3 emerging artist per year. Their regular concert series consists mostly of canadian popular musicians and world music (Beausoleil played there earlier this year).
The Quartier Petit Champlain is extremely quaint and is mostly made up of a co-op of retailers and residents funded by the government to preserve the essence of Old Quebec. You’ll see what I mean when you look at the photo:
The folks at the Théâtre Petit Champlain are very enthusiastic about arranging some kind of an artist exchange with us. Their concert hall is charming; it seats about 250 people and the back wall is exposed brick that was part of the original building. They have a bar and a gallery for workshops. It’s really a fantastic place:
We had lunch at the Le Cochon Dingue (the crazy pig) with Arnaud, Philippe and Ulric from the Théâtre Petit Champlain, Pascal from the International Affairs office, and Catherine, our host. Lots of French was spoken, mostly about le problème du fromage – or the cheese problem. It seems that up until recently, the cheese in Québec was different, but as good as the cheese in France. They were outraged that one little contamination of cheese (that killed just one or two people) would regulate all the goodness out of Canadian cheeses. They were sure to point out that in fact it was the meat in the same facility as the cheese that caused the contamination. Poor Canadian cheese…I thought my arugula salad with toasted almonds and roquefort was quite delicious despite the new regulations.
After lunch Jimmy, Catherine, Pascal and I took the écolobus up to Vieux-Québec. The écolobus is a tiny little electric bus that runs on batteries alone and costs $3 a day to run. Isn’t it cute?
Donc, c’est tout pour le moment. À bientôt.
Filed under: Canada,Notes from Cat,Quebec by Cat | July 18, 2009 | Comments (0)
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