Quasi-Euro Old Quebec: Tacky Theme-Park City

Whoever came up with the idea of a theme park had a specific market in mind: tourists who want to be tourists. Some people enjoy gaping at buildings and carrying cameras around their necks. They like tour buses and explanatory signs--everything made easy.

People who love Old Quebec say its just like a small European town. Although I've never been to a small European town, I'm pretty sure it's not like Old Quebec. Old Quebec is a Small European Town Theme Park--a carefully designed approximation that makes things easy for its American guests.

WHEN MY FAMILY made the pilgrimage north last summer, we stayed in the Chateau Frontenac, the colossal hotel Fantasy land of the Canadian town. It sits high atop a hill, majestic, with layer on layer of green copper spires rising toward the sky. It's world-renowned--any self-respecting tourbook will tell you that.

The Chateau Frontenac brochures promise opulence and charm, and the lobby delivers. Bellhops in neatly pressed uniforms charge through the hallways, friendly old doormen smile as they swing open brocaded doors and plush couches line the darkly-stained lobby.

The rooms upstairs, though, aren't much bigger than the ones in the Hilton outside the old city. The price reflects the lobby--the Chateau Frontenac is famous but its also inordinately expensive.

Surrounding the Chateau Frontenac are the standards of the pre-fab family vacation: the park, the boardwalk, the coin-slot telescopes, the street musicians, the toddlers stumbling around looking cute, the proud parents snapping picture after picture.

There's also an alleyway teeming with self-proclaimed artists who peddle their creations, mostly pictures of the hotel, for $5 to $10 apiece. From a distance, the paintings are elaborate, detailed depictions of the Chateau Frontenac. Up close, they are xereoxed pieces of paper marked with black-and-white ink sketches of the hotel. Like pages from coloring books, their spaces are filled with watercolor paint. The "artists" must not use small-enough brushes--the don't always stay in the lines.

NO THEME PARK is complete without a ride or two. Old Quebec has its "Founiculaire," a sort of outdoor elevator that travels by rope from the hotel to the street below. Although the two-minute trip costs at least a dollar, and the stairway to the town center isn't very long, the lines for the Founiculair often run around the block.

Down below sit the houses so often touted on tourbooks and travel brochures, with picturesque stone walls and neat, well-kept shutters. If they were as authentic as the literature promises, they would contain quaint furniture, a wood-burning stove, maybe a kerosene lamp or two.

But in these windows and doorways hang T-shirts, most of them sporting self-deprecating slogans about Canada's relationship with the United States. Others are marked with a grinning frog--the mascot, a la Mickey Mouse, that symbolizes the Quebecois secession movement.

Nearly every re-created house contains a similar souvenir shop. In addition to the T-shirts, the stores sell hats, bags, mugs, shot glasses and thimbles--any tacky souvenir, you name it and it's there stamped "QUEBEC" in cheesy letters. When my brother went to Quebec on a school trip, he bought my mother a set of cheap plastic measuring spoons shaped like frogs from stores. They've long since broken.

OLD QUEBEC is a French-speaking city in a French speaking province. The shopkeepers in Old Quebec speak French. So do the restaurateurs. Their establishments, which serve French entrees at suspiciously-similar prices, fill the houses that don't contain souvenir shops.

But inside the walls of the old city, here in Quebec World, the waiters and managers all speak English to accommodate their American customers. Forget about trying to order in French; the servers would probably prefer you didn't slaughter the language.

OLD QUEBEC isn't all there is to the city. Beyond the walls of the original town is newer Quebec and a huge metropolitan area. My parents and I wandered past the gates of the old city to a street called the Grande Allee.

It is pronounced "All-aaay" because of the accent marks. Most American tourists would probably pronounce it as my mother did--"All-eeee," the last two vowels falling flat and eliciting a smirk from any self-respecting French speaker. Most Americans save themselves the embarrassment--they never make it past the walls of the old city.

What they miss is reality. They miss the Grande Allee, lined with bars and restaurants with prices that actually vary. This is a true Quebec hangout, filled with people who live in the city year-round, who parallel park their slick sportscars along the old roads. Well-dressed, French-speaking college students bounce from bar to bar in small groups as others sip German beer and eat pizza at the outdoor tables, just people-watching.

THOSE STALE TOURISTS miss the annual agricultural fair, L'Exposition d'Agriculture, held every August not far beyond the city limits. It's a French-speaking twist on the 4-H county fairs I'm used to seeing in Maryland.

The barns are lined with small, hay-filled, putrid-smelling stalls with "meuh"-ing cows. Inside a big auditorium, the farmers judge the bovine beasts on muscle tone and udder size. Outside, the opportunists hawk cheap jewelry and miracle carpet cleaner from makeshift booths. Kids get sick from the rollercoaster ride whizzing in circles and blasting loud rock music. It's dirty and confusing. And nobody speaks English for any tourist's benefit.

There's no hint of the Grand Allee or L'Exposition d'Agriculture inside the walls of Old Quebec. Within the walls, scarcely a cobblestone lies out of place. Those that do were probably knocked out by somebody's Toyota.

ALL THE TOUR BOOKS describe Old Quebec as a colonial town. But this is not an old town, or even a rebuilt one. It's as artificial as the global villages in Epcot Center. Everything in Old Quebec is made of plastic, somebody's idea of what an old European town would have been like if Walt Disney had been around to design it.

The buildings in the seventeenth-andeighteenth-century town of Quebec weren'tperfect-they were crooked and lived-in and worn.The cobblestones weren't perfect but filthy andcrumbling, broken by horse drawn carriages thattoppled over, dirtied by horses who left trails ofstench and defecation.

THE ONLY HORSE SHIT in Old Quebec now isdropped by the few big beasts who drag the heavynew carriages, pulling tourists through the townfor 50 bucks a pop. It is quickly swept away,before it can offend the sensitive nostrils of theout-of-town visitors.

There was a lot of horse shit at theagricultural fair. It sat and stank, toocommonplace to be cleaned. It smelled terribly,but I liked it much better