After walking a few laps around the shop, Maria Castagna picks up a glass ornament in the form of a pink, sparkly ice cream cone and smiles widely.
It resembles one she had when she was little, so realistic she remembers trying to lick the sprinkles off.
“This reminded me of it,” she said.
Castagna made the trip to Quebec City from New Jersey, drawn in by the picturesque, snowglobe-like scenery around the holidays.
That feeling of nostalgia is what Marc Gaboury hoped to awaken when he first decided to open the Boutique de Noël de Québec, in the heart of Old Quebec, in the summer of 1986.
Having watched his father run a grocery store for years in the city’s tourist district, Gaboury felt ready to open a business of his own.
One evening, as he sat around chatting with friends, he came to the realization there was something missing in the area: A year-round Christmas store.
Growing up, Gaboury’s mother often visited Maine, where he saw similar Christmas boutiques. With Quebec City being so popular with tourists, he suspected it would be a winning concept.
“In the first summer, we had a lot of customers already,” Gaboury said. “One customer in five was telling me, ‘Are you crazy to sell Christmas stuff?’ Because this was new in Quebec.”
Marc Gaboury featured in a news clipping about his boutique as he gets ready to move locations in 1995. (Submitted by Marc Gaboury)
Save for the occasional Easter bunny or skeleton around Halloween, the two-storey shop is dedicated almost exclusively to Christmas all year, from top to bottom.
Animated snow globes, Santa figurines, stockings and ornaments of all shapes and colours line the shelves, which are painted in a dark green, evoking an enchanted forest.
Stockings, ornaments and snow globes are sorted by colour and theme at the Boutique de Noël de Québec. (Franca Mignacca/CBC)
As with most restaurants and stores in the area, Gaboury has some quiet periods in the year, but for the most part it has grown steadily over the last four decades.
It has become even more popular since the city introduced the German Christmas Market, which has kiosks right across the street from the store.
Tourists brought in nearly $250 million last December
The market has become a major attraction, drawing more than 600,000 people last year, according to Quebec City’s tourism bureau, Destination Québec Cité.
With ongoing tensions over U.S. tariffs, the tourism bureau is forecasting a three per cent drop in American tourists. But Quebec City has also seen a jump in domestic tourism, more than making up for that decrease, the bureau says.
Véronique Boulanger, a spokesperson for Destination Québec Cité, says Quebec City has wide appeal across Canada as a holiday destination — and it shows in the occupancy rates.
“It’s the magical decor, the history, the francophone [culture] and the Christmas market,” she said.
Last year, tourists spent about $250 million in Quebec City in the month of December alone.
Boulanger says Gaboury’s Christmas boutique is one of the top attractions for tourists – regardless of the season.
“It’s really a boutique that’s out of the ordinary,” Boulanger said.
The store is located in the heart of Quebec City’s tourist district. (Franca Mignacca/CBC)
Gaboury, who does much of his business with U.S. wholesalers, says he only took a small financial hit this year on a few of the products he sells. But he isn’t concerned for his shop’s future.
“Like everybody, we absorb the loss and then we go on,” he said.
His customers, he said, come because they “love Christmas, they love family, they come for the memories and we have so many beautiful things to look at all over the store.”
He said it’s hard to pinpoint a single bestseller, but ormanents of the Château Frontenac and a moose on the back of a Bombardier snowmobile are always popular.
The shop doesn’t focus on handmade or locally sourced décor, but Gaboury says he tries to stock items shoppers won’t find elsewhere.
“I would say, when you buy something in our store, it’s something you keep forever,” he said.
Andrew Ingram, who was in Quebec City from Chicago to celebrate his recent engagement, said he made it a point to include the Boutique de Noël in his itinerary.
“We heard that this is the place to be for ornaments and Christmas shopping,” he said. “It’s beautiful.”
In his almost 40 years running the boutique, Gaboury says he hasn’t once regretted opening it.
“One day, I will retire, but I’m not ready,” he said. “Santa doesn’t want that anyway.”
