Both a capital as well as a sought-after tourist destination, Québec is a city offering a wide variety of fine dining establishments. Among the dozens of restaurants in the very popular Old Québec neighborhood, one can find the finest tables and most prestigious chefs in the city. Much importance is given to local produce and the menus are widely inspired by French cuisine. This great culinary tradition is largely the result of the efforts of the late Serge Bruyère, who was a precursor of new cuisine in Québec, updating French traditions as early as the 1970s.
From fast-food to haute cuisine, there are upwards of 2500 restaurants in the greater Québec city area, representing a ratio of 350 restaurants for every inhabitant, which is 3 times more than in New York! There are endless choices for every visitor. Beyond the Old Québec neighborhood, other areas such as Grande Allée, Cartier and René-Lévesque Streets near the National Assembly are positively crawling with great restaurants, many of which offer lively terraces in the summertime.
Many gay-friendly cafés and bistros can be discovered (or rediscovered) on Saint-Jean Street in the heart of the Faubourg Saint-Jean-Baptiste. The Nouvo Saint-Roch has also more recently emerged as a sought-after destination. The Saint-Roch and Saint-Sauveur neighborhoods offer many restaurants featuring a diverse selection of food from around the world. The more affluent Sillery neighborhood also offers excellent restaurants, among them those housed by Université Laval as well as many hotels and shopping malls along Laurier Boulevard.
Although Québec proudly displays its French character and traditions, and probably as a result of having always been a capital focused on tourism for over a century, no regional specialties are really associated with the city. That being said, Québec’s gastronomic trademark is associated with the best that French cuisine can offer and local produce of exceptional culinary quality.
Glenn Crawford was the instigator of the Build Our Bank and LGBT Village initiatives in the famously reserved capital since starting the volunteer-run project in 2007. While he has recently stepped down as president of The Village, making room for new ideas from successor Ian Capstick, Crawford has left an indelible mark on a town where there wasn’t a lot of consensus about creating a gay village.
Born out of town hall meetings about the reconstruction of Bank Street, the idea of designating the stretch between Wellington and Gladstone as The Village was about “trying to get a sense of belonging and place, where people feel they can be themselves, have access to services, fool around and shop,” Crawford says. “Gradually a lot of LGBTQ organizations have coalesced into this area… Forming The Village was a natural progression.” When he started fundraising and participating in public advisory committees five years ago, Crawford came up against both the veiled homophobia of a local business improvement association, as well as criticism from the LGBT community that the project was coming 10-20 years too late.
“People were asking Why do we want to create a ghetto? A lot of that criticism comes from people who are out [of the closet],” Glenn says with his typical incisiveness, “from people who have the relationship, two dogs and friend circle. I don’t need a Village either! It’s for people who are struggling in suburban or rural areas; it can be for everyone.” And as a child of the sleepy, inaccessible suburb of Kanata – “not an easy place to grow up gay” – Crawford speaks from experience. Like most LGBT people in any Village in any major city anywhere, the urban geographic bubble exists as much for townies as it does for people who have moved there to escape the stifling places they come from.
And lest you think that Crawford’s project was for commercial reasons alone, it may seem counterintuitive that he’s not a shop-keeper himself, but rather a website and graphic designer who lives just off Bank and works part time in a local gallery. “There’s a social aspect to it. Taking pride in who you are and finding a sense of value in there being a community,” which for him includes keeping the subsidized housing in the area, and watching out for condo development that could “force out the funkier elements.”
“It’s [about] putting roots down; people say it’s 20 years too late, but for me it’s just in time,” Glenn concludes. Echoing a theme that has emerged in everything from architecture to sociology, he adds that “The online world is not the same as having a real community. I worry about that, about younger generations, they’re not valuing the sense of community.”
So maybe when you walk by the “We Demand” mural that The Village commissioned on Gladstone and Bank Streets, you might get a sense of what that community looks like and is for, and clap your fairy hands for Glenn Crawford.
Photo by Noreen Fagan
