By KATHIE RALEIGH

WOONSOCKET — Festivities related to the 400th anniversary of the founding of Quebec City come to Woonsocket and Pawtucket tomorrow in the form of Envoye à Maison — A Franco-American Homecoming.

The event is part of a regional cultural exchange program supported by the Government of Quebec and the United States’ National Endowment for the Arts.
Starting in June, Envoye à Maison has visited St. Albans and Vergennes, Vt.; Plattsburgh and Tupper Lake, N.Y.; and will head to Cambridge, N.Y., after the Woonsocket-Pawtucket event.
Each celebration is similar in that it involves performances, workshops and crafts demonstrations by artists from both sides of the border. Yet each is different because different artisans and musicians take part at different locations.
The local homecoming celebration starts with crafts demonstration on Saturday from 2 to 4 p.m. at St. Ann Arts and Cultural Center, 84 Cumberland St.
See QUEBEC, Page A-2
Sylvette Chanel will display and demonstrate how she makes religious figures out of beeswax.
“This is very well known and very prevalent in Quebec, especially at Christmas,” explains Winnie Lambrecht from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, who is the project manager for Envoye à Maison.
“Shaping these figures is a very old tradition, preserved in Quebec,” she said. Chanel was selected to come to Woonsocket in part because the location of her demonstration, St. Ann, is a former church.
Dowser Richard Roy will speak and demonstrate this technique for finding water. Roy is the president of the Association des Radiesthesistes du Quebec Inc. and taught dowsing at this year’s 16th annual convention of the Canadian Society of Dowsers.
Finally, France Hervieux, a weaver, will demonstrate the making of a special sash in the style originally worn by quadrille dancers but now more likely to be used as a scarf.
The homecoming festivities continue Saturday evening when Le Foyer Club, 151 Fountain St., Pawtucket, hosts a dinner and a performance by Les Gens d’plaisir.
The evening starts at 5:30 p.m. when patrons can meet the performers and the artisans. Dinner will be at 6 p.m., and the music will begin at 7 p.m.
The opening act will be Americans Daniel Boucher, a fiddler, and musicians and vocalist Colette Fournier and Friends.
Members of Les Gens are Stephane Landry, accordion; Tess Leblanc, vocals and step dance; Daniel Lemieux, guitar and feet percussion; Louis-Simon Lemieux, fiddle, harmonica, banjo and mandolin; Denis Maheux, vocals, fiddle and caller; Paul Marchand, guitar, vocals and feet percussion.
Tickets for the dinner and performance are $18 per person, $30 per couple, $12 for seniors. Reservations can be made by calling (401) 728-8328.
Lambrecht, from the Council on the Arts, has been working with the Centre de valorization du patrimoine vivant in Quebec City, the Corporation Les Vieux Metiers, in Longueuil, the New York State Council on the Arts, Traditional Arts in Upstate New York, and the Vermont Folklife Center to present Envoye à Maison. Those organizations are sponsors, along with the Crandall Public Library in Glens Falls, N.Y.
Lambrecht also wrote a companion booklet for the homecoming, with text in French and English, that provides an historical overview of French influence in North America, including traditions in music, dance, crafts, food and storytelling.