Based largely upon the archival documents left behind by the lay and ecclesiastical leaders who organized the celebrations of Champlain and Laval, Ronald Rudin's study describes the complicated process of staging these spectacles.

Ronald Rudin is a professor in the Department of History and co-director of the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling at Concordia University. His most recent book, Remembering and Forgetting in Acadie, received both the US National Council on Public History Book Award and the Public History Prize of the Canadian Historical Association.

'Rudin conveys beautifully a sense of what commemorative activities were (and are) about. He understands public performance as a symbol and an act that is blatant and subtle, unifying and divisive [and] he explores the negotiating process by which institutions seek to legitimize their claims to control and organize these events. In doing so he illuminates a telling story of cultural politics couched within a significant urban context.'