Quebec City - The Red Thread

Quebec City, one day in July. Some cities are best told in black and white; this one could only be told in colour: the deep green of the parks, the blue of a summer sky, and everywhere, like a thread running through it all, red. Window frames, metal roofs, a road sign, a pickup truck, a ball hanging in a tree, a hat left on a bench. I followed that thread from one end of the day to the other, from Parliament Hill down to the foot of the cliff.

Napping under the trees.

Around the Parliament Building, the city stretches out on the grass. It is noon, it is hot, and the lawns turn into open-air living rooms: a couple on their folding chairs, young people lying at the foot of a tree, a reader hidden behind the tall grass, a man asleep among the flowers. Behind the trees, the tents of a festival are waiting for the evening; here, nobody is in a hurry.

Red as a common thread.

In the streets of Old Quebec, red keeps coming back. It frames the windows of the stone houses, tops the metal roofs, colours the terraces, right down to the pickup truck turning the corner under a sign that does not say “Stop” but “Arrêt”. The Aux Anciens Canadiens restaurant, under its big red roof, is almost its emblem.

Facing the river.

Below the Château Frontenac, the Dufferin Terrace lays its boardwalk above the St. Lawrence. People come here to watch the water, as wide as an arm of the sea, and the Lévis shore across the way. An older couple leans on the green cast-iron railing and says nothing: the river is enough.

At the foot of the cliff.

Down below, the Petit-Champlain quarter lives in the shadow of the cape. Red balls float in the trees, a huge mural tells the story of the neighbourhood on the gable of a house, and passers-by look up. On a bench, a lady reads her phone, her coral hat beside her. The red thread ends there, at the close of a summer afternoon.