Where to See Nativity Scenes in Quebec

This is the easiest nativity scene to see in all of Quebec: it’s outdoors, it’s free, and it’s a few blocks from the Christmas market.

Cathedral-Basilica of Notre-Dame de Québec Cathedral garden, 1 rue des Remparts, Old Quebec

Twenty-four life-size figures (the Holy Family, the angel, the shepherds, the Wise Men, the animals and full-size camels) spread across three lit shelters outdoors, with music. The figures were made in the Philippines and paid for with donations. The first life-size nativity went up there in 2017. In winter 2025 it drew more than 45,000 visitors, welcomed by a hundred fifty volunteers. The page of the Catholic Church of Quebec, which sets it up.

When, and how much

Free. In 2025 it ran from November 20 to January 4: Thursday through Sunday until December 21, then every day. That’s the usual pattern, but each year’s dates aren’t announced until November.

On the same outing

Quebec City’s German Christmas Market works with the nativity and is a few minutes’ walk away, so you can do both in one afternoon.

Saint Joseph’s Oratory is the only place on this page where you can see nativity scenes in July. It isn’t a Christmas exhibit: it’s the museum’s permanent collection.

Museum of Saint Joseph’s Oratory of Mount Royal 3800 chemin Queen-Mary, Montreal

The exhibit has two parts: the museum’s own collection, and Une crèche, un monde (One Nativity, One World), nearly a hundred nativity scenes from about a hundred countries on five continents. More than a hundred twenty-five works are on display. Open daily, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; C$3 for adults, C$1 for ages 7 to 17. The Oratory’s page.

The nativity in the crypt

The highlight isn’t in the museum but in the Crypt Church: a life-size plaster nativity by the Italian-Canadian Montreal sculptor Joseph Guardo, unveiled on December 22, 1951, in his studio on Rachel Street East. It replaced the Oratory’s very first outdoor nativity, unveiled in December 1950 and blessed by Archbishop Paul-Émile Léger in front of about a hundred people braving the cold. Plaster doesn’t hold up well outdoors, so it was eventually moved inside. Since December 2018 it has been in the crypt, set up so you can see it from anywhere in the church.

A caveat

Guardo’s ten life-size scenes from the life of Saint Joseph are closed for renovations as we write this. The shrine itself is open from 6:30 a.m. to 9 p.m., and it’s free.

Saint-Jean-Port-Joli is Quebec’s woodcarving capital. So its nativity wasn’t bought. It was carved, and carving on it continues.

Church of Saint-Jean-Port-Joli L’Islet County, Chaudière-Appalaches

On December 12, 1987, about twenty of the village’s carvers presented the parish with twenty-one figures and animals carved in basswood, led by Benoit Deschênes. They chose the wood for its warm color, which matches the church’s woodwork. The set now has thirty pieces: shepherds, angels, Wise Men, the Holy Family, sheep, a camel and a dog. The parish page.

An expectant Mary

In December 1994, Jacques Bourgault added an expectant Mary. Nativity scenes almost never show this, because they show what came after. This one was meant to be a Nativity that keeps growing, and pieces have been added to it for nearly forty years.

Before you go

The parish doesn’t post dates or hours. The nativity is up for the holidays and you can see it whenever the church is open. A call to the parish office can save you a wasted drive.

This is the place on this page closest to the santons of Provence, and the one with the biggest surprise. They really are santons: clay, about 4 inches (10 cm) tall, fired in a kiln. But the characters aren’t Provençal at all.

Les Santons de Charlevoix Rectory of Les Éboulements, Charlevoix

Bernard Boivin founded the workshop in 1983 after discovering santons in Provence and bringing the idea home. He later passed the craft on to Doris Jean. There are more than a hundred twenty-five different figures. Université Laval’s heritage inventory (in French) describes the craft in detail, but it dates from 2006 and the address it gives is no longer correct.

What you’ll find next to the Holy Family

The miller, the lumberjack, the fiddler. The loup-garou (werewolf) and a few other creatures from local folklore. Real people from Charlevoix: the painter Clarence Gagnon, the writer Félix-Antoine Savard, the legendary runner Alexis le Trotteur. And local buildings, including the church of Saint-Joseph-de-la-Rive. It’s exactly what Provence does (filling the crèche with the village’s people and trades), just with a different village.

The studio has moved

Many listings online still give the old barn in Saint-Joseph-de-la-Rive, but the workshop left it in fall 2022. On October 17 of that year, three sisters from Les Éboulements (Sonia, Linda and Julie Gauthier) bought the business and the molds and moved into the village rectory. We couldn’t reach their website, so call before you stop by.

A church basement in a mining town that turns into an exhibit hall every winter. The rest of the building is just as worth seeing as the nativities.

Interpretation Center for the Religious Heritage of the Appalachians Basement of Saint-Alphonse Church, 34 rue Notre-Dame Ouest

About a hundred nativity scenes in a Christmas display. In 2022 there were more than seventy, from Thetford Mines, Lévis and Sherbrooke, and also from Bethlehem, Italy, China, Mexico and the United States. The Center’s page (in French).

On the same visit

In the choir loft are more than two thousand sacred objects and vessels collected from the region’s churches, and in the basement, more than ten thousand religious objects from people’s homes. Plan on an hour.

When

From early December to mid-January, a few afternoons a week, free or by donation. The days change from year to year (Thursday, Friday and Saturday in 2022; Thursday through Sunday in 2023) and aren’t announced ahead of time. A phone call will tell you.

A private collection that became public, which changes everything: now it can’t be broken up and sold off.

Musée des cultures du monde 900 boulevard Louis-Fréchette, Nicolet

Hélène Berher-Pelletier collected more than four hundred fifty nativity scenes over nearly fifty years. The museum acquired them in 2022, so they belong to the museum now, not on loan. About fifty were shown in winter 2025–2026, in an exhibit called Joyeux Noël madame Hélène. The museum’s program.

Before you make the drive

The nativity scenes aren’t on display as we write this, and the museum has announced it will close for renovations in 2027. The collection will come out again, but maybe not the winter you’re there.

For each one, we give the most recent year we could confirm. Use it as your starting point when you call.

Longueuil Basement of the Co-Cathedral of Saint-Antoine-de-Padoue, 132 chemin de Chambly

More than a hundred nativity scenes from the collection of Lucille Prince, who says it all started some thirty years ago with a visit to her grandmother that never happened. Confirmed dates: December 13 and 14, 2025, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The parish announcement.

Quebec City, Charlesbourg Moulin des Jésuites, 7960 boulevard Henri-Bourassa

Dominick Trudeau owns more than seven hundred nativity scenes from some sixty countries, many inherited from his father, and has shown a selection in one town after another since 2011. Among them: a Kraków nativity made of candy wrappers, and a Montreal nativity built entirely from orange traffic cones. Shown December 1 to 20, 2025, in an 18th-century flour mill. Free. The Mill’s page. The exhibit travels, so it may not come back to the same place.

Île d’Orléans Foyer de Charité Notre-Dame d’Orléans, 8169 chemin Royal, Sainte-Pétronille

About a hundred nativity scenes, some a hundred years old, all donated by individuals and religious communities: a small collection built entirely from gifts. Confirmed dates: December 8 to 23, 2024, every day. Free. The Diocese of Quebec’s report.

Laval Saint-Martin Church, 4080 boulevard Saint-Martin Ouest

A living nativity, acted out rather than displayed, as part of the 7 p.m. Mass on December 24. It’s the only one of the area parishes’ four Christmas Eve Masses that lists one. The parish schedule.

The crèche came to New France with the religious orders, and it didn’t stay a simple copy for long.

The wax Infant Jesus figures Monastère des Augustines, 77 rue des Remparts, Quebec City

The Augustinian and Ursuline sisters made the Christ Child figures for their crèches themselves: wax, with glass eyes and real hair curled by hand, dressed in an embroidered gown. The Monastère des Augustines has about seventy-five of them. The oldest goes back to the 1600s. It’s said to have been a gift from the Augustinian sisters of Dieppe, whom the nuns called their “Mothers of France,” to ease their first Christmas across the Atlantic. The Monastery’s page.

A craft that has died out

The last Augustinian sister who knew how to make them stopped in 2021. The figures are in museum storage, not on display. They had their own exhibit, Le dernier petit Jésus de cire (The Last Little Wax Jesus), from November 30, 2024, to January 12, 2025, but it’s over now. So you can’t see them, though the Monastery’s museum is open every day.

A lumberjack, a fiddler, a fox

“Animals from here, like the bear and the fox” instead of the ox and the donkey, and lumberjacks, fiddlers and parish priests in a snowy setting: that’s how the Montreal newspaper La Presse described the Quebec crèche in 2008. The same article mentioned crèches made of bread dough, moose antler and incense paste. We give the date because we found nothing newer: it’s a snapshot, not a current survey.

For the tradition itself (Christmas Eve, where the crèche goes in the home, what gets added to it), see the Quebec traditions page.

Many tourism listings still send visitors to the Lower Saguenay to see an international nativity exhibition. It closed in 2017.

What there was

The organization that ran it shut down in fall 2017 and sold its collection on November 11 and 12. At its peak the collection had up to twelve hundred nativity scenes; about five hundred were left. Attendance had dropped from fifteen to eighteen thousand visitors a year in the good years to three hundred ninety-three in summer 2017. The local paper’s account.

Where the nativities are

About two hundred were bought by the Fondation de La Pulperie in Chicoutimi, which talked at the time about exhibiting them in the future: the museum’s announcement. They aren’t on display as we write this.

Why this entry is here

Because Rivière-Éternité has five hundred residents and nobody ends up there by accident. And because thirty years of volunteer work on twelve hundred nativity scenes deserve better than an out-of-date listing.