Quebec City celebrated its founding on July 3, 1608, yesterday and also 400 years of French-speaking peoples in North America yesterday.
A day of speeches and concerts were scheduled, but the party itself will keep going through October with performances by Celine Dion and Paul McCartney.
Celebrations were to start with a salute to Samuel de Champlain, the French explorer who in the spring of 1608 crossed the North Atlantic Ocean and headed up the Saint Lawrence River to establish the city with 30 other men.
Several guests, including Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his French counterpart Francois Fillon, were expected to attend the ceremonies.
Former French prime ministers Alain Juppe and Jean-Pierre Raffarin, as well as former presidential candidate Segolene Royal also made a trip from Paris. Royal governs a region of France, Poitou-Charentes, where Champlain was born.
“Proving that French culture and language has survived here for four centuries, I find that remarkable,” Royal said, noting a fraternity between Quebec and France that was echoed in a speech by Alain Juppe, the mayor of Bordeaux on Wednesday during a ceremony welcoming to Quebec the Belem, France’s oldest tall sailing ship.
Protests, however, threaten the fun, with municipal unions in the midst of contract negotiations threatening to seek attention to their plight, and pacifists announcing their intentions to protest a military parade’s inclusion in the program.
Quebec separatists, meanwhile, have criticized Canada’s federal government for suggesting the city’s festivities are also a celebration of the beginnings of Canada.
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