Photo: Cassandra Kerwin

Village Vacances Valcartier (VVV) offers visitors a reason to rejoice over the holidays with the opening of Canada’s largest winter playground on Dec.19, and the 21st Hôtel de Glace (Ice Hotel) on Dec. 24 (weather permitting). There is still plenty to do despite public health restrictions.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons - Public Domain

This street is named in honour of Joseph Vézina (1848-1924), a conductor, composer, organist and music professor who was born in Quebec City. His first music teacher was his father, François Vézina, a house painter and amateur musician, who taught him to play the piano.

Photo: Griffin Poetry Prize

Of all the places John le Carré took readers in his two dozen or so spy novels, only once did he make an extended stop in Canada. That place was Espérance, a bustling gold mining town in Quebec’s Abitibi region.

The Quebec government wants to ring in 2021 by tightening language laws to shore up the perceived erosion of French usage. Instead of auld lang syne it will be, with apologies for flippancy, an old language whine, so to speak.

Photo: Samson Learn Photography, courtesy of Nora Loreto

As of Dec. 21, Canada had recorded 14,228 known deaths from COVID-19. At least 11,041 of those deaths (77.6 per cent) were among people living in long-term care facilities. That number doesn’t come from a federal government source, but from records manually compiled by Quebec City writer and podcaster Nora Loreto.