Goblin | La Porte Rouge, Petit Champlain — The Door Between Seoul and Québec

A red door with no handle on the outside. Step through it in Seoul and you come out in Quebec; step back and you are home. The show never explains the mechanism, which is the correct decision, and the door became the most photographed object in Old Québec. It is at 68 Rue du Petit Champlain, and here is the part fans usually learn on arrival: it is the stage door of Théâtre Petit Champlain. A working back entrance to a working venue. There is a sign on it now asking people not to open it during performances, which tells you everything about the last several years of its life. Do not pull the handle. Take the photo, step aside for the next person. Rue du Petit Champlain itself is claimed as one of the oldest commercial streets in North America — a narrow stone lane under the cliff, stacked with small shops, strung with lights, absurdly photogenic and completely packed from June to October. The drama shot in winter, when snow banks up against the stone and the lane empties out, and that version is genuinely worth planning a trip around. Some fans arrive and find it underwhelming. The door is small and the wall is plain and there is a bin nearby. That is fair, and it is also the point. Stand where Eun-tak stood and look back up the lane at the buildings leaning over it. The door is ordinary. The street behind it is the thing that made the door believable. Cover photo: Rue du Petit Champlain in winter, by Daniel Hu, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.