Stade Municipal de Québec

Stade Municipal
Location	Quebec City, Québec Canada
Building chronology
Built	1938
Tenants
Les Capitales de Québec
Capacity
4,300

The Stade municipal de Québec, or Quebec City Municipal Stadium in English, is a ballpark located in Quebec, QC. It has been used by every professional team playing in the city since its opening.

The stadium was built in 1938 under Provincial Premier Maurice Duplessis, who was a baseball fan, using public funds allocated to build a number of ballparks throughout the province, under a Depression-era public works policy to create jobs for unemployed workers. These would later form ready locations for teams in the Can-Am League and Provincial League in the 1940s and 1950s. As a result, the blueprints for the stadium are identical to those of the stadium built shortly before in Trois-Rivières, QC.

The first baseball game at the stadium was played on May 14, 1939, between the Québec and Trois-Rivières teams of the independent Provincial League. The stadium was built with lights; the first night game was played there a few weeks later. The ballpark hosted a number of Quebec City-based teams over the following decades, both inside and outside of organized baseball, including the Quebec Athletics, Quebec Braves, Quebec Carnavals and Quebec Metros.

When the Metros left town after the 1977 season, the stadium began to fall into neglect. It barely escaped the wrecker's ball in the mid-1990s, until a local committee was formed to save what had become a historical landmark. The municipality invested some 2 million dollars in a renovation project. The refurbished ballpark became the home of the newly-formed Capitales de Québec, owned by famed minor league operator Miles Wolff, in 1999. The team played its first home game on June 4, 1999 and has used the stadium ever since.

The ballpark includes a number of historical displays inside its concourse, such as posters on the history of baseball in Quebec City, a tribute to Quebeckers who have played in the major leagues, and a small room which serves as the home of the Quebec Baseball Hall of Fame, complete with a wall holding plaques for all members. The room was dedicated in 2011; before that, the Hall only had a virtual existence.

The ballpark is located at the edge of Parc Victoria, a municipal park located near Quebec City's downtown core. Parc Victoria includes some spectacular old-growth trees that can be seen behind the outfield fence. The ballpark features a hand-operated scoreboard in right field.

A couple of major changes took place in 2017. First, the stadium received a corporate sponsor and became officially known as "Stade Canac" starting on January 1st. Second, the city decided to convert the field to artificial turf in order to facilitate maintenance and allow for more use by entities other than les Capitales. This was complemented by plans to build a temporary dome to cover the ballpark in the winter-time, in order to provide local players with a practice facility open year-round. The dome is removed during summers, and reinstalled in the fall. In 2024, renovations to replace the ballpark's yellow stucco façade with bricks were announced, as well as improvements to the clubhouses and offices, to be completed by 2027 at a cost of $20 million.

Further Reading

• Gabriel Béland: "Québec aura son « petit Fenway du Nord »", La Presse, May 9, 2024. [1]
• Daniel Papillon: En lieu sûr... un stade pour la capitale, Commission de la capitale nationale du Québec, Quebec, QC, 2013. ISBN 978-2-551-25406-4

Related sites

• Article on the stadium from les Capitales' web site (in French)