Québec City is the capital of the province of Québec. In the mid-19th century, the city was the capital of all of Canada. It’s nickname in French is La Vieille Capitale, which translates to the old or former capital. The etymology of the name comes from the Algonquin word kébec, or “where the river narrows.” Québec’s toponym refers to its location on the Saint Lawrence River after it has significantly narrowed in width.

We walked around the neighborhood of Old Québec, or Vieux-Québec, which has walls and churches dating back to the 17th century. We strolled along the Terrasse Dufferin, a wooden boardwalk which looks over the edge of the city at the river below. The edifice of the Château Frontenac, a late 19th century historic hotel, towered above us while archaeological ruins looked up at us through glass windows from underneath the terrace.

We had time for one one in-depth museum visit and picked the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ). We caught the special exhibit Miró in Mallorca which focused on the artist’s later oeuvre from his time on the Spanish island of Majorca. The MNBAQ primarily houses galleries of art from Québec. Two standout galleries highlighted the work of Fernand Leduc and Inuit Art. Leduc was an abstract expressionist who painted in Montréal in the 1940s and 50s. The MNBAQ dubbed him a “painter of light” who passed “passing from an expressively gestural art to an almost mystic quest around colour with a stop for geometric rigour along the way” [1].

The motto of the province of Québec, the tag line on Québecois license plates, is Je me souviens. This translates from French to “I remember” and refers to the loss of New France to the British in 1763. The people of Québec remember being French before they were British and before they were Canadian. The slogan does not seem to honor the Algonquin, Haudenosaunee, and Inuit–the traditional inhabitants of Québec.

The Brosseau Collection of Inuit Art at MNBAQ displayed art from Nunavik (in northern Québec), Nunavut, and the Northwest Territories. The exhibit was titled Ilippunga, which means “I have learned” in Inuktitut, and designed around the the Inuit concept IQ (Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit in Inuktitut, or Inuit traditional knowledge). This exhibit displayed “the ancestral values, skills and know-how found in the culture of the Canadian far north, which artists have imbued in their work” [2].

QUÉBEC CITY, CANADA

[1] “Fernand Leduc: Painter of Light” MNBAQ. https://www.mnbaq.org/en/exhibition/fernand-leduc-1206

[2] “Inuit Art. The Brosseau Collection: Ilippunga.” MNBAQ. https://www.mnbaq.org/en/exhibition/inuit-art-the-brousseau-collection-1237