Moment Factory’s Rural Quebec
The Montreal studio behind halftime shows and airport terminals is lighting up forests, wildlife refuges and a hilltop tipi in regional Quebec. For advisors, that means evening product where things used to go dark.
Moment Factory built its name on halftime shows, airport terminals and the Las Vegas strip. In regional Quebec, the Montreal studio has quietly become something else: the go-to partner for towns and attractions that want visitors to stay after dark. That matters to advisors, because an evening experience is what turns a day trip into an overnight stay.
Three places to know
Foresta Lumina, Coaticook (Eastern Townships). The original. Parc de la Gorge de Coaticook commissioned the illuminated night walk from Moment Factory in 2014, and the two refresh it every season. The park says it welcomed its one-millionth visitor in July 2025. It’s a 2.6 km trail through the gorge forest, open from early summer to mid-October.
Anisipi, Amos and Pikogan (Abitibi-Témiscamingue). In 2022 the town of Amos and the Anishinaabe community of Pikogan opened a water-themed circuit with Moment Factory. Anisipi means “pure water” in Anicinape, and Amos is known for municipal water so clean it isn’t treated: it comes straight from an esker, a glacial ridge of sand and gravel southwest of town. Moment Factory built four installations. The best known is at Pikogan, where a tipi on a hilltop hosts video projections in which Anicinape community members share their stories. The others are at the town’s well, at Lac Beauchamp beach, and at Refuge Pageau.
Refuge Pageau, Amos. The wildlife refuge founded by Michel and Louise Pageau cares for orphaned and injured animals. Its Anisipi stop is an interactive installation about how ecosystems connect.
Why it matters
Moment Factory says it has completed more than 550 projects since 2001. Its regional Quebec work shares a brief: give a small destination a signature night-time product, built on its own landscape and story, that a city can’t copy. Alongside Foresta Lumina, its Lumina night walks include Anima Lumina at the Zoo sauvage de Saint-Félicien and Tonga Lumina at Mont-Tremblant.
For the trade, two things follow. These installations lengthen the stay, because an evening ticket in Coaticook or Amos means a hotel night nearby. And they are seasonal and often sold in time slots, so they reward planning in a way most rural attractions don’t.
Sources
Jeff Cameron writes about neighbourhoods and the business of travel for Not An Atlas, usually from a desk buried in maps, beside a mug of tea big enough to count as carry-on. His first trip was to St. Pete Beach, Florida, where dipping his feet in the Gulf felt like a major expedition, and he's still chasing that first shock of “the ocean can be warm?” He always takes the window seat (nobody climbs over him to get to the washroom), lands already briefed thanks to an audiobook or two about wherever he's going, and sizes up every city by its first cup of coffee. He'll happily walk 45,000 steps in a day to find the side streets where a place really lives. Kraków, Utrecht and Turin are the underrated favourites he'd go back to tomorrow. Friends say curious, candid and composed. His mom says contrary, and she's probably right. Next stop: anywhere a first-class, round-the-world ticket will take him.
