Artists and sculptors showcased their best in Laval’s Vieux Sainte-Rose
While summer rain in recent years has been a constant worry for the organizers of the annual Symposium Ste-Rose, there was hardly a drop of moisture in the air during this year’s three-day art event. However, the threat came from another force of nature – wind.
As most of the artists exhibit their works outdoors in tents, efforts this year to set up the equipment in Laval’s Vieux Sainte-Rose neighborhood had its challenging moments, according to Oprina Félicia Dolea, president of the Corporation Rose-Art which organizes the symposium.
Coping with nature’s forces
“We started installing them at six in the evening the day before we opened and we had to deal with the wind – but now everything is okay,” she said.
If anything, the lack of rain seemed to have encouraged people to turn out in larger than usual numbers this year – which was the Symposium Ste-Rose’s 30th anniversary. For some of the artists, that meant brisk sales of art pieces and canvases – or just greater public exposure for their art.
From July 23 to 26, appreciators of quality sculpture and art from all over Quebec, as well as Ontario and other parts of eastern Canada, gathered in Vieux Sainte Rose for an event that has come to be recognized as one of Quebec’s leading and most prestigious outdoor art shows.
Shirley Théroux singer and artist
For the third time, the organizers were able to persuade legendary Quebec singer Shirley Théroux – a talented visual artist in addition to her musical talents – to be the official spokesperson for the symposium.
Théroux had a string of hits in Quebec, as well as in Eastern Ontario, Atlantic Canada and other French-speaking regions of the country, during the 1960s and 1970s. She was also a highly popular late-afternoon program host on French-language television in Quebec. Several of Théroux’s art works were featured in a special segment of the 2026 symposium.
After years of developing herself as a painter of figurative or representational art, Shirley Théroux exhibited a selection of paintings she produced since last year as abstracts. “I worked on this one six months,” she said in an interview, noting that abstract is far more difficult, requiring more concentration than most people imagine.
AI makes inroads into art
“It takes time to study your canvas, to verify the colors to see that everything is in the right place – why there is green here and black there – it’s not just tossing paint randomly – it’s not like that at all,” she added.
As Artificial Intelligence continues to make its way into a growing number of sectors of human activity, it was only a matter of time before AI would begin to influence the world of art – and the Symposium Ste-Rose.
Oprina Félicia Dolea acknowledged that she and others in the art collective were aware that AI might actually have been used to help create some works in this year’s symposium, while adding that Rose-Arts has no guidelines or rules for how AI is used by participating artists. Still, she suggested it could have legitimate uses in the creation of art as a new kind of tool alongside canvases, paints and brushes.
Home of renowned artists
In addition to Théroux’s support, the symposium’s honorary president this year was Christopher Skeete, Member of the Quebec National Assembly for Sainte-Rose.
As always, the symposium took place alongside the Rivière des Mille-Îles in the charming and historic Laval neighbourhood. The village is renowned as the birthplace of internationally-acclaimed Québécois painter Marc-Aurèle Fortin. Sainte-Rose was also at one time the home of landscape painter Clarence Gagnon. Both influenced generations of artists in Quebec as well as around the world.
Awards of excellence
After winning a range of awards for excellence over nearly three decades, the symposium’s organizing committee continues to uphold the standards that have established the Symposium Ste-Rose’s reputation for excellence in art circles across eastern Canada.
In 2019, the Laval Chamber of Commerce and Industry presented them with a Dunamis award for helping to promote tourism in Laval. They were also a finalist for a second Dunamis in 2020 and 2022, as an environmentally-sustainable organization or enterprise.
An estimated 20,000 people attended. Although most are usually from the Laval and greater Montreal regions, the busy vacation season typically also draws in visitors from Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, as well as from the U.S. states of New York, New Hampshire and Vermont.
