Founding fathers : the celebration of Champlain and Laval in the streets of Quebec, 1878-1908 / Ronald Rudin.

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Based largely upon the archival documents left behind by the lay and ecclesiastical leaders who organized the celebrations of Champlain and Laval, Ronald Rudin's study describes the complicated process of staging these spectacles.

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Rudin (Concordia Univ.) focuses on the role of choreographed public spectacles in nurturing social cohesion in late-19th- and early-20th-century Quebec by examining two iconic figures--Samuel de Champlain, the founder of Quebec City, and Francois de Laval, the first bishop of Quebec--who together embodied the secular and religious basis of French Canadian identity. The author develops a rich critique of the contemporary infatuation with performed spectacle, tropes of memorialization, and the language of performance in four chapters that examine successive commemorations of these founding figures: the reburial of Laval's remains in 1878; the unveiling of a monument to Champlain in 1898; the bicentenary of Laval's death in 1908; and the tercentenary of Champlain's founding of Quebec in 1908. In doing so, Rudin exposes complex challenges to simple metanarratives: British imperialism, the role of the church, relationships with France, French-English relations in Canada, and the shift to professionalization of public performance. Played out in the public space of Quebec City, these performances also consolidated the city's role as the cultural, if not national, capital of French Canada. No mere historical narrative of events, this well-researched scholarly study reflects on the complexity of strategies of public opinion manipulation in an age prior to mass media culture. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. All levels and collections. B. Osborne Queen's University at Kingston