PREVIEW: Quebec City set for 400th birthday with pomp, style

Jul 2, 2008, 2:36 GMT

Montreal ­ North America's oldest permanent European settlement is getting ready for a lavish party Thursday to celebrate its 400th anniversary.

The year-long festivities to commemorate the founding of Quebec City reach their climax on July 3, the date that French explorer Samuel de Champlain landed on a spot aboriginal people called Kebec ­ the place where the river narrows.

The tens of thousands of revellers expected to crowd the city's famous cobbled streets have much to celebrate. Champlain's fur- trading post on the banks of the St Lawrence River has grown into a vibrant provincial capital of 600,000 inhabitants, the cradle of French-Canadian culture and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The birthday party is starting early in the morning with an outdoor breakfast hosted by Quebec City Mayor Regis Labeaume and will finish at midnight with the largest display of fireworks in Canadian history.

At 11 am, the time Champlain landed, hundreds of bells in churches, legislative buildings and boats that have sailed from France for the occasion will start ringing in Quebec and across Canada, calling on Canadians to observe the founding of North America's only walled city.

The Queen's representative in Canada, Governor General Michaelle Jean, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Quebec provincial Premier Jean Charest along with a cohort of foreign dignitaries are expected to attend a formal ceremony in the shadow of the city's landmark Chateau Frontenac Hotel.

A major tourist destination with a well-deserved reputation for joy de vivre, Quebec City knows how to through a party. But festivities to mark the quadricentennial got off to a rocky start earlier this year: the New Year's show was savaged in the local media.

The organizing committee for the celebrations was plagued by internal divisions and suffered embarrassing cancellations and resignations.

Then came the news that Pope Benedict would not be attending the party in this former bastion of Catholicism in North America and that the federal government decided not to invite Queen Elizabeth II, Canada's head of state, fearing a nationalist backlash in the mainly French-speaking province.

To add insult to injury, French magazine Paris Matchs special edition this week on Quebecs 400th anniversary confused the founding of the city with that of the eponymous province, showing how little Quebecs founding nation knows about its former colony.

'We've had it tough, really tough,' Labeaume said in an interview with CanWest News.

'But now things are going well, and I think it's because people are starting to see for themselves what the 400th has to offer. It's not abstract anymore, it's there, and things are happening every day.'

More high-profile events are scheduled later this summer, including free outdoor concerts by Sir Paul McCartney and Quebec diva Celine Dion, as well as a show by Cirque du Soleil.