Bells rang out across the country Thursday from the Maritimes to British Columbia and the North as Canadians joined in simultaneous commemorative ceremonies for the 400th anniversary of the founding of Quebec.

Organizers of the anniversary celebrations say 400 communities were taking part, with churches and other bell towers tolling in unison at 11 a.m. E.T., the time that Samuel de Champlain landed on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River in 1608.

The occasion has a special significance for French-Canadian communities outside Quebec, most of whom trace their roots back to the province that began, in Champlain’s time, as the colony of New France.

In St. Boniface, Man., one of Canada’s oldest French-speaking communities outside Quebec, men and women in costumes from previous centuries are taking part in ceremonies to honour Champlain and Quebec.

Phillip Mailhot, director of the St. Boniface museum, said a canoe carrying someone dressed as Champlain paddled up the Red River to a landing near the community’s famous cathedral.

So Champlain, who never travelled west of the Great Lakes, was given a ritual welcome in a community that he in effect helped found, Mailhot said.

'The history of Quebec is our history'

“We in St. Boniface will be thanking Samuel de Champlain for having started the great experience of establishing the French fact here in North America,” he said.

The estimated 50,000 Franco-Manitobans who live mostly in St. Boniface look to Quebec as their place of origin and the source of their living culture, Mailhot said.

“The history of Quebec is our history,” he said, “and what we in St. Boniface represent is a sort of extension of that history, an extension of that mission and an extension of that role of having the French language in Canada.”

Similarly in Vancouver, where the suburb of Coquitlam is home to many of the province’s Franco-Columbians, the occasion of Quebec’s 400th anniversary has a special significance.

Pierre Senay of the Maison de la Francophonie de Vancouver said there was much to celebrate.

“We are all together as French-Canadians,” Senay told CBC News, “Four hundred years of French presence in North America is a real accomplishment.”