Photo: Ville de Québec

Quebec City Mayor Régis Labeaume and Premier François Legault may be meeting soon to announce an agreement on the route of the proposed tramway system.

Photo: Harald Hoffmann

• The Shannon Irish Show 50th-anniversary edition, recorded in 2016, was streamed live on March 13 on the Facebook pages of Voice of English-speaking Québec, the Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network and A Different Tune: Musical Heritage in English-Speaking Quebec. It and the following two shows will be archived on the A Different Tune YouTube channel as well as on Facebook.

Photo: Ville de Québec YouTube site

A well-known figure in Quebec City’s tourism industry is returning to town after a brief stint in Montreal.

Robert Mercure, who served as director general of the landmark Château Frontenac hotel from 2007 to 2018, will be the new head of the city’s tourism office as of April 23.

Photo: Lise Lafond from QCT archives

It’s said that wearing green on St. Patrick’s Day keeps you from getting pinched – it makes you invisible to leprechauns, who like to pinch the people they see. A more plausible explanation is that the colour green came to be associated with St. Patrick during the 1798 Irish Rebellion – the British wore red, and the Irish wore green.

The phone rings. After a moment’s delay, the mechanical voice identifies itself as Visa security and describes a couple of weird charges on a credit card.

At that point, most people mutter a few choice words and hang up. The call is obviously a scam.

Photo: Luc Lang

The CEGEP Champlain–St. Lawrence (SLC) Lions sports teams hoped all year long, like their college counterparts throughout the province and Canada, that maybe, just maybe, the pandemic would ease up before the end of the winter sports season and there might be a way to get some games in.

Photo: Shirley Nadeau from QCT archives

A very short street and a stairway are named in honour of the Lépine family, notably Germain Legris dit Lépine (1821-1899) who began his career as a cabinet maker. In 1844, he opened a coffin-manufacturing business on Rue Saint-Vallier Est. Due to the deadly cholera and typhus epidemics of that era, business grew rapidly. He also began to organize funerals.

Photo: Jonathan Letellier-Black

Despite its apparent prime location, the Starbucks coffee shop at the corner of Avenue Cartier and Boulevard René-Lévesque is one of some 200 outlets the Seattle-based company is closing across Canada.

The Montcalm Starbucks is among three others closed in the city, including on Boulevard Charest and at Jean Lesage Airport. The outlet on Grande Allée closed last fall.

Photo: Ville de Québec

The city’s kitchen waste recycling pilot project was a smash success, declared city officials on March 1. In announcing the results of the test involving more than 2,000 households, Mayor Régis Labeaume noted how eager residents are to see a full program implemented.

Photo: Jacquelyn Smith

When Jacquelyn Smith first moved to Quebec City in 2006, her French was just about good enough to puzzle out that the mayor of the city at the time, Andrée Boucher, was a woman. Now, 15 years later, with a Université Laval law degree under her belt, Smith is hoping to follow in Boucher’s footsteps and become the second mairesse in the city’s history.

Photo: capitalesdequebec.com

Québec Capitales president Michel Laplante has several plans for his team in 2021 if the Frontier Baseball League can’t play out its regular season as planned.

“We have a plan B and I can say that we are up to plan Z for 2021,” said Laplante during a press conference with Quebec City Mayor Régis Labeaume and Coun. Steeve Verret on March 1.

Photo: Danielle Burns

March is maple syrup month in Quebec. As spring approaches and melts the snow, the sun warms the maple trees and gets the sap flowing.

An urban tree-tapping (acériculture) exhibit in the park adjacent to the Grand Marché drew sweet-toothed March breakers to the outdoor Érablière Godbout kiosk for samples of maple syrup and products, information and a bucket hunt.

• The Trio celtique presents The Craic Sessions, a series of online performances, from March 12 to 14. For details, see the article below.