Eric Andrew-Gee
Globe & Mail
Forget ice sculptures, the Château Frontenac and Bonhomme. Set aside the cobblestone streets and antique cannons.
Quebec City has long been seen as a sleepy government town at worst and a tourist destination at best, the latter never more so than during Carnaval, the winter festival that kicked off on Friday.
But quietly, in recent years, the provincial capital has transformed into something more interesting: Canada’s most successful city.
Numbers tell part of the story. Among the country’s eleven biggest urban areas, Quebec City boasts the fastest economic growth, the lowest crime rate, lowest unemployment rate and least income inequality. Only Edmonton and Winnipeg have more affordable homes.
Walk the streets of neighbourhoods like Saint-Sauveur and Limoilou, far from the souvenir shops, and you could be in the hippest corners of Brooklyn, with a food scene to match. Quebec City restaurants won twice as many Michelin stars as Montreal’s last year, with about one-quarter of the population.
La capitale nationale has been on a roll, even as other Canadian cities struggle with runaway housing prices, homelessness and gridlock. Bonhomme’s hometown isn’t immune to these challenges, but has weathered them better than most, offering improbable lessons in urban thriving.
The baby-blue Adidas worn by Mayor Bruno Marchand on a recent workday tell another part of the story. Mr. Marchand started wearing brightly coloured running shoes to get recognized while campaigning for his first term in 2021, when the little-known social worker had to wear a mask because of COVID. It has become part of his brand; he never wears formal shoes in public any more, “other than for funerals,” he says, when he settles for black runners.
The shoes seem to express the spring in the city’s step that has transformed a once-dowdy community of bureaucrats and insurance executives into a hive of entrepreneurship. Where about one-quarter of the work force was in the public sector two decades ago – the same level as Ottawa-Gatineau today – that figure is now down to 8 per cent after a generation of rapid private-sector growth.
That makes the city less vulnerable to periodic waves of government belt-tightening than it used to be, Mr. Marchand says. The local economy is far more diverse now, branching beyond traditional strengths in shipbuilding (Davie) and insurance (Beneva and Industrial Alliance) into new-gen fields such as data centres and photonics.
The mayor credits a predecessor, Jean-Paul L’Allier, who served from 1989 to 2005 and laid the groundwork for much of modern Quebec City.
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