QuébecCountry: CanadaArea: 1.5m km²Time zone: GMT -4

Québec is the largest province in Canada and its second-most populated at 9 million. It is thought that it was first occupied by Paleo-Indians arriving from Asia between 20,000 and 14,000 years ago, and by the European exploration of the area in the 1500s it was occupied by 11 Indigenous groups: the Inuit and ten First Nations, the Abenakis, Algonquins, Atikamekw, Cree, Huron-Wyandot, Maliseet, Mi ‘kmaqs, Iroquois, Innu and Naskapis.

A City of Heritage is both feeling and formula. “Heritage” anticipates a certain urban ensemble that records, represents or evokes a civilisation or tradition – it is a poetic, even philosophical, endeavour to conjure a feel for a sense of place, and people otherwise lost to the ravages of time. Yet it is formula, because to qualify a heritage is subject to formal accreditation. There are more than 300 UNESCO-designated World Heritage Cities in 101 countries. If pressed to think of a heritage city par excellence, my mind, and maybe yours too, would journey to Rome, to Athens, to sites where ancient monuments are far from immaculately preserved but present instead in a crumbling state of degradation. A veritable hive (498) of these heritage sites are in Europe (60 in Italy alone), while in North America, a relative scattering of 109. One of those sites is the Historic District of Old Québec.

I went to Québec City in mid-July, intrigued to experience what is hailed as the Europe of North America. My friends told me to practise my French and I must say I was sceptical that I’d really need it, certain that the city would be predominantly bilingual. Another friend, a French friend, told me that Québécois wasn’t at all like contemporary French anyway, but stuck in time, an Old French belonging to a 17th-century aristocracy that had never been updated. Later, in Reddit threads and chatting to locals, I’d find this theory to be not without a bit of folklore. French and Québécois aren’t so vehemently opposed – contemporary versus archaic – but rather two languages that have moved in different directions, with Québécois choosing to keep some rhythms, pronunciations and vocabulary and remake others. During my week travelling the capital and surrounding province I’d find this dance of choosing, keeping and remaking to be at the forefront of Québec’s cultural offering, from the preservation of certain architectural styles and plant life, to the reconstruction of an entire town and re-performance of near-lost rituals. In Québec’s complex negotiation of identity we can map a family tree of Indigenous ancestors, European settlers, North American influences and American neighbours, each asserting their presence in this vast and fascinating province.

Québec’s origin story is, like all origin stories, contested. There were many conquests that preceded the one that gets the most airtime, namely the Seven Years War. On a historic tour along the Governors’ Promenade – a wide wooden boardwalk that hugs the Saint Lawrence River – our guide relays an abridged history of Québec City: its “discovery” by the French in 1608, its christening as New France in 1663, and its conquest by the British in 1760, the subsequent identities the city has claimed and renounced. We stop and look up at the Château Frontenac. I think that the castellated château looks like a wedding cake and envy those who had seen it in wintertime, frosted white, with slugs of snow running along its gables. I’m handed a cup of maple water to try which, far from syrupy, is surprisingly refreshing – and, I’m told, even more hydrating than coconut water. One of my companions says it is already available at Whole Foods. We pause and return to observing the hotel.

Twelve hours earlier, having just landed at the airport from London, I had little knowledge of the castle and its mythos. It did however become immediately clear – from all the signage that welcomed me to the capital of the province – that a photo of Québec City is sure to be a photo of the Chateau Frontenac; perched on a promontory, the towers and turrets of the fortress dominate the skyline. After a drive along wide roads below overhanging, horizontal traffic lights, we entered the city, and just some ten minutes later we were passing through one of the castle’s porte-cochères into the central courtyard. From the carpeted and chandeliered lobby, all the way up and into my room, I was followed by the luxurious scent of mahogany. I was on the seventh floor and below the window ran that wood-slatted promenade, snaking around the Cap Diamant and onward, following the river as far as I could see.

The next morning, I ate breakfast (continental, of course) at street level with the promenade. Wide, flat and sparse save for a row of cannon-like black staccato notes along an otherwise empty stave, it looked perfect for someone who likes to jog – I don’t, but one can only imagine; in fact, most people passing by looked like they might have just been jogging along it, but I later realised that a great many people dress in activewear in North America, regardless of activity.

Having finished breakfast, I joined the joggers and strollers and tourists on the promenade, and craned my neck to take in the towering splendour of the château. Designed by architect Bruce Price, it was commissioned by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) and completed in 1893. The railway, which had been built just over ten years prior, connected the coasts of eastern Canada and British Columbia with a single line, opening up the entire country to tourism. At various stops along the railway line, the CPR commissioned a series of châteauesque hotels to incentivise the wealthy leisure classes to journey across the continent. The decision to build in a baronial style – inspired by the châteaux of the Loire Valley – came in the wake of a restoration project initiated 20 years earlier by Lord Dufferin. The Governor General recognised the beauty of the military fortifications encircling the city and overruled plans to demolish them. Instead, he sought to restore the capital to its former 17th-century “European” look and embarked on a number of building projects or, as he called them, “City Embellishments”, one of which was the building of the promenade. Whilst many of Dufferin’s embellishments look characteristically French, they were blended with attributes from late-mediaeval Scottish tower houses. Such Scottish influence was not without agenda; in 1853 Queen Victoria’s Balmoral Castle was remodelled in the Scots baronial fashion, and the late architecture writer Mark Bence-Jones noted Dufferin’s endorsement of Scots baronial for its “formal, historical, and political associations with Scotland on one hand, and for its connections with British royalty on the other.”

Ultimately a picturesque fantasy, Dufferin’s restoration established a pan-Canadian identity propped up by “the brilliant history and traditions of the past”, as he noted in a speech of 1876. And yet, in that same speech, Dufferin acknowledged that this project sought not just the preservation of the military relics of the past, but also certain romantic, imagined characteristics of Québec’s “glorious inheritance”. Unreservedly political, the project communicated a unified French and British identity, whilst simultaneously preventing encroaching Americanisms.

Following the boardwalk to Côte de la Montagne, buildings previously hidden from view start to emerge. We wind down the road to a steep staircase connecting the upper city to the lower, the new to the old; Old Québec is famous for its 17th-century architecture, we are told. Entering the Place Royale, a cobbled square surrounded by quaint two- and three-storey stone houses, I am however struck not by historicity, nor heritage, but kitsch. I’ve entered a suspiciously clean simulation. Most people in the square were part of a group with a guide, and once they emptied out more groups came in. After our guide tells us about the 17th-century architecture (wide chimneys, high-pitched gable roofs, and small-paned windows) he adds that it was, in fact, constructed in the late 20th century.

A history of the Place Royale: in 1682, the Place Royale’s buildings – first erected by the French – were consumed by flames; in 1759 the buildings were damaged once again, this time during the Battle of Québec, and rebuilt under the British regime; then in October 1866, a great fire (in fact the Great Fire of Québec City) destroyed between 2,500 to 3,000 buildings, including the Place Royale, and burning through three neighbourhoods. Place Royale was soon repopulated and Irish immigrants who worked in the Navy yards moved in, but when they later moved on, the neighbourhood was abandoned and houses were turned into warehouses and manufacturing facilities. In the 1970s, Place Royale was entirely rebuilt. But rebuilt in what moment of Québec’s history? As reported by the New York Times, “in Artillery Park – builders have been stripping away the appendages added by later occupants that had changed the appearance of the buildings.” Like a game of pass-the-parcel where each newly revealed layer is French, English, French, English, at what point do you stop unwrapping? It was decided that Place Royale be bestowed a 17th-century character evocative of the “golden era” of the French ancien régime. The primary goal of this ambitious renovation project was to make Place Royale a major tourist attraction in Québec City, but it also spoke to the burgeoning Québecois nationalism – a “Quiet Revolution” that had been reasserting French identity through the restriction of English usage and the protection of the French language which, following the 1977 Bill 101, was declared the language of business in Québec. Beyond the old town walls I enjoyed Québec’s emphatic insistence on its Frenchness. Although it was not Frenchness as I knew it. Here, boulangeries take the form of roadside diners, where people drive in, park their red pickup trucks, and slip into leather seated booths to tuck into a croissant.

This restoration of an entire town centre (where about half of the structures were entirely rebuilt) follows in the ethos of 19th-century architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc for whom restoring a building “is not to preserve it, to repair, or rebuild it; it is to reinstate it in a condition of completeness which could never have existed at any given time”. Like the Frotenac and Dufferin’s embellishments, this is heritage at its most fantastical. Later, feeling a little deceived, I read through Google reviews of the Place Royale. I was surprised that so many lauded it as in this vein: “Very historical looking with historical charm”. Perhaps fantasy does not cancel out historical value. As Alois Riegl wrote in the Modern Cult of Monuments (1903), over time, a replica may acquire historical value, especially in the case of the loss of the original. We need only look at Paris’s Notre-Dame cathedral, whose 19th-century restoration (by none other than Viollet-le-Duc), was far from authentic to its 13th-century remains. No, Viollet-le-Duc reinstated an impossible completeness, which we all so loved and took for antiquity, a nostalgia only heightened by its 2019 consummation by flames.

We did not spend much time in Québec City. Instead, we followed the river east, setting off on long drives of up to four hours flanked by rows upon rows of temperate hardwoods – fir, spruce and softwood pine trees – all of which seemed to clone themselves indefinitely. The consistency of the landscape was thrilling. Occasionally, we’d roll through a town: a strip of old and new-build houses, a composite of Regency-style cottages, Gothic prairie barns and maritime vernacular, more often than not painted white or stained red. Slanted, slatted Adirondack chairs were on every porch, a pile of wood stacked to the side, a truck parked nearby. The distance between everything and yet the sure expectation (and fulfilment) of seeing another white porch with another pair of Adirondack chairs was magnificent. Then, entirely unannounced, a thick mass of fog would appear, covering the conifers and road ahead. In Gaspé we passed by one of the tallest lighthouses, but ironically, we could not see it. We were told that it was in a fog such as this that the RMS Empress of Ireland sank in 15 minutes. Just as quickly as the fog had descended, it lifted.

One of our drives took us to Jardins de Métis – one of the most northerly gardens in North America. Having driven for many hours through such a uniform landscape I did not expect particularly biodiverse planting. This betrays my distinct lack of horticultural knowledge; Québec’s cool summer temperatures and generous snow cover are ideal for raising all kinds of plants. Alexander Reford, the garden’s director, told me how the snow cover here (between January to April) is very generous, acting as a blanket to moderate the temperatures at ground level, protecting and preserving plants from winter winds. As a result, the gardens are home to flourishing azaleas, meadows, crabapple orchards, gentians and primula glades.

Established by Elsie Reford in 1926, the Jardins de Métis was originally home to a fishing lodge owned by Elsie’s uncle who later gave her the property, where she took up gardening after an injury. Hailing from a family of shipping agents who worked for lines in Scotland and England to transport cargo to and from Québec, Elsie had special access to rapid freight service and every year would visit the UK flower shows, ordering plants and collecting seeds. The Jardins de Métis is ultimately a collector’s garden, with plants, both native and exotic, collected over more than three decades (1926–58). Plant expeditions flourished after the First World War, with more countries accessible to plant explorers. Here a palimpsest of species from all over the world gather in glades and meadows in a “condition of completeness which could never have existed at any given time”, in Viollet-le-Duc’s words (of course, given the very nature of a living garden, it will never be complete). Following the English style of gardening, informally arranged around meandering streams, this subtle artifice appears entirely natural – and it is a beautiful sight to behold.

It was on one of Elsie’s trips to the UK that she encountered the blue poppy, which she consequently became the first to successfully grow in Québec. As Alexander, Elsie’s great grandson, has written, “of the more than 150,000 plants that make up the botanical inventory of the planet, and the 60,000 plants in cultivation, few if any plants inspire the same degree of interest – and one might add frustration – as the blue poppy.” A blue poppy sounds unlikely. Orange, cadmium, burgundy, fuschia, pale pink, buttercream, post-box-London-bus-red – these are the hues we might expect to see a poppy wearing. Blue however is a relatively rare colour in the plant world (much like the rarity of lapis lazuli pigment in Renaissance paintings).

Introduced around 1933, Elsie’s blue poppies came from the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh, which respectively came from seeds collected by Frank Kingdon-Ward on his 1925 expedition to Tibet (where they were first “discovered”). Jardins de Métis’s blue poppies have striking icy blue petals with a bright yellow stigmata. Alexander says they are “frozen in time”, explaining there has been little to no hybridisation since they were first collected; Jardins de Métis’s blue poppies, according to recent DNA analysis, show them to be true to those found by Kingdon-Ward. Not only is this garden a cornucopia of species from all of the world, it too contains time – centuries of it – held in the poppy. The gardens, too, are resolutely future oriented. An Oxford-trained historian, Alexander has managed the 200 acres of garden for thirty years, and is “sensitive to the conservation mandate and management and re-discovery of our collections”, yet equally concerned with advancing landscape architecture and materials innovation. Twenty-five years ago, he established an International Garden Festival foregrounding contemporary architecture and landscape architecture which this year saw interventions exploring hemp and seaweed as sustainable building materials. 

Alongside his work as a botanist, plant-collector, explorer and writer Frank Kingdon-Ward was operational as a spy for the British India Office in the 1930s. In 1935 he was at the centre of an international scandal after being arrested by Tibetan authorities for ilegally crossing the Sela Pass between Tawang and West Kameng.

A garden is as much a cultural artefact as a city square – something constructed, manipulated and used. But to what end? Alexander acknowledged (with quiet poeticism) that whilst other gardens might toy more with trickery, subterfuge and sleights of hand, the Jardins de Métis, he hopes, surprise in their juxtaposition of scale. “Our gardens are large […] but the Saint Lawrence is magnificently large, at 35 miles across at our location. As such, any human creation is modest as contrasted to the size and extent of the natural landscape and seascape.” We left the gardens to experience that landscape and seascape: four hours to the Canyon Sainte-Anne where 1.2 million-year-old rocks are carved by 74-metre waterfalls. A natural construction on a scale unfathomable. I recalled Susan Orlean’s 1998 non-fiction book The Orchid Thief , about the illegal trade in orchids that led to the arrest of horticulturist John Laroche:

“The sheer bigness of the world made me feel lonely to the bone. The world is so huge that people are always getting lost in it. There are too many ideas and things and people, too many directions to go. I was starting to believe that the reason it matters to care passionately about something is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size. It makes the world seem not huge and empty but full of possibility. If I had been an orchid hunter I wouldn’t have seen this space as sad-making and vacant - I think I would have seen it as acres of opportunity where the things I loved were waiting to be found.”

Orlean’s book is the premise for Charlie Kaufman’s 2002 film Adaptation where he is portrayed by Nicholas Cage as a self-loathing screenwriter employed to adapt The Orchid Thief into a screenplay. In the film Orlean, played by Meryl Streep, habours a secret romance with Laroche and together they are seen snorting a mind-altering powder derived from the plant which creates a state of profound intoxication.

I felt incomprehensibly small and insignificant overlooking the waterfall. Beside this irrepressible cascading force, that was breaking apart logs and shattering rocks, I experienced a kind of temporal vertigo; I thought about Alexander and his great-grandmother’s blue poppies, and why it is we make gardens, and why we claim land as ours. I thought about this and I wondered what it was that I cared so deeply about.

It was on our last day journeying across the province that we visited Wendake, one of the reserves of the Huron-Wendat Nation. Established in 2006, the site was developed for the purposes of tourism and is home to the Ekionkiestha’ National Longhouse that guests can stay in. Over a delicious dinner informed by the terroir and three native agricultural crops (the Three Sisters – red beans, corn and squash) our guide Diego told us of the Wendake mission, the nuances and tensions of tradition vis-à-vis tourism. Tourism is the main imperative of this site where the Longhouse is a replica, and the powwow dance a performance of a performance. These authentic inventions should not be surprising. One cannot show an uninitiated outsider the true sites and ceremonies that invoke the Creator. “It is very hard to mix culture and tourism,” Diego said, and yet, faced with the ongoing repercussions of the 1876 Indian Act (which is still in force), tourism is imperative to the survival of the Wendat culture. And tourism is just one strain of resisting erasure.

A notable shift came in the 1970s. Just when the Quiet Revolution was insisting on Québec’s unfalteringly French identity, the Wendat were in a position to work at their own self-determination; they had, as anthropologist Louis-Jacques Dorais observed, “started to fulfil their primary and secondary needs thanks to an important economic recovery, to the incipient recognition of their territorial rights, and to the generalisation of college- and university-level education”. Self-determination took many forms: the revitalisation of ancestral culture and language, as well as the revival of Wendat spirituality. A number of leaders and activists emerged during this moment, including the historian Georges E. Sioui, whose scholarly work sought to redeem the Wendat’s original name, revisiting their history, ethics and philosophy through a contemporary lens; and Marguerite Vincent Tehariolina, who compiled research on Wendat language and culture based on Jesuit linguistic materials. In 1989, a group of traditionalists built in Wendake a traditional longhouse of wood and bark, heated by fire, where they could relearn the centuries-old traditional Wendat rituals that had been dormant for 200 years. These recovered rituals were eventually practised in the newly recovered Wendat language. Now, tourists can stay overnight in the longhouse, listen to myths and legends told by members of the community, and witness live “ceremonies”.

Despite the government’s systematic attempts at eradication or enforced assimilation, Wendat tradition lives on. I was struck by a caption in the Huron-Wendat museum, a caption that felt all the more powerful given my growing preoccupation with the orchestration of time and heritage: “Just as we changed and adapted, so did our language and traditions. They were never frozen in time. Now even though we may speak and write a little differently, the Wendat language is still used…”

We left Wendake and went straight on to the airport. In the car, I thought about what Diego had said, of the difficulty of mixing tourism and culture. It’s true that the two seem to contradict one another: tourism is kitsch and false, but culture accesses the authentic, the real; or so it goes. But this hierarchy omits the fact that culture always exists with the assumption of an outside viewer, it is too a performance. It is hard to mix tourism and culture because in doing so the boundaries between the inauthentic and authentic are destabilised. My time in Québec exposed an active negotiation of authenticity, culture, tourism, nationalism and heritage, perhaps a complex dynamic, but if one is willing to embrace a little theatre, and a little vertigo, a compelling one. The week felt a lot like time travel: from post-modern French revival to frozen blue poppies and resurgent Indigenous traditions, and in between all that, traversing the miles upon miles of forests and rocks and roads and falling water, was the truest negotiation of prehistory and presentness. .