Public and civil leisure in Quebec

Between the world of commercialized leisure and the world of home cocooning lies a middle groundin Québec replete with public and community organizations that work together by the thousands to offer recreational and leisure opportunities to Quebecers and growth opportunities to communities. At some point everybody takes part in a festival, enrolls their children in team sports, visits a park,uses a bicycle path, volunteers for an amateur theater troupe, organizes a soccer tournament, expresses a need for recreation, or claims the right toleisure.

Through more than 50 case studies that provide a compelling portrait of leisure in Québec, this work illustrates that public and civicleisure model that Quebecers use in their recreational pursuits. It presents the model’s mission, its values, certain principles, the resources used, the main challenges ahead, and the ways of meeting and working together that enable the model to thrive and develop.