- Explore Quebec ►
- Essential
pages
- Places to visit
- Attractions
About-Quebec.com
An incomplete guide to
discovering Quebec
The
recipe:
Two doses of France, one dose of Scotland, one dose of England, and
two doses of North America. Flavour with history, modernity
and originality, and allow to mature for at least 400 years. Then
serve.
The result:
a perfect Quebec. A province that in its ways and its culture is unique
in Canada, and unique in North America.
While Europe was largely closed for Transatlantic visitors due to
Covid-19 , North Americans looked more to their own
continent
for
interesting travel destinations. And while most vacationing in North
America is a distinctly North American experience, where
English
is the language of tourism almost everywhere, even in Mexico, Quebec
really does offer an opportunity for "dépaysement"... the feeling that
you are in a different country, far from home, a place with different
cultures, a different language, and its own history.
Even for Canadians, visiting Quebec is like
visiting another
country, not just another province. Cross over the bridge from downtown
Ottawa, and you're in
Gatineau,
a city where the people speak a
different language. Take a weekend trip from Toronto or New York to
Montreal,
and you'll feel you've done far more than just an hour in the
sky or a few hundred miles or kilometers up the highway. This is a city
with its own culture, a place where you can take the metro, like in
Quebec, rather than
the subway, listen to people talking a different language, or a whole
bunch of languages, and enjoying a lifestyle that is somehow
different.
Whether you're from New York, from Quebec or from
London, from Chicago or Calgary or Croydon or even Calcutta, in
cosmopolitan Montreal you'll find a blend of the familiar and the
unfamiliar. In "The art of City-Making", Charles Landry described
Montreal as "Paris without the jet-lag" for US visitors; and while it
isn't really Paris and it doesn't have an Eiffel tower (Why
not?
is a good question) Montreal is a city that gives you that sense of
having reached somewhere different, somewhere new, even if you only
came a short distance from over the US border.
Tadoussac, on the north bank of the Saint Lawrence
But in the same way that Quebec is not France, Montreal is
not Quebec. To enjoy the real Quebec, rather than the real Montreal, go
up the highway to discover
Quebec
city, the only walled city in North
America north of the Mexican border, or further on to take in the rural
beauties of les
Laurentides;
or travel up the northern shoreline of the
Saint Lawrence,
or enjoy the beauty of
Gaspésie
on the other
side of the water. Most people only get to see Gaspésie from
the air, as they fly in over the North-American continent on a
transtlantic trip; but Gaspésie is far better seen from
ground level, and for North Americans it's so much nearer than Europe.
Quebec is diverse : metropolitan and rural, familiar and
foreign. And for
North
Americans it's there on
the doorstep, a bit of France in North America. For
visitors from
Europe, it's it bit of America where the people speak
French; and for
visitors from France it's America as it might have been if
a few
European wars had gone differently, or it's France as it might be today
if
the French Revolution had not taken place.
For the French, Quebec is a bit of old France beyond the
Atlantic; but it's also a place where the pre-revolutionary
fleur-de-lys is still on the flag, where the people speak an old
fashioned or idiosyncratic form of
French, where to park a car you may have to "
parquer dans un stationnement"
(in France you have to "
stationner
dans un parking"), where
drinks are called "
breuvages"
rather than "
boissons",
where many public
institutions and functions are still "
royal", and people
measure things
in
pieds
and
pouces
(feet and inches), just as they do in the USA.
A very short
history of Quebec
Quebec was the birthplace of modern Canada. Quebec
was first "discovered" in 1535 by the French explorer Jacques Cartier,
on his second voyage to the New World. Cartier and his expedition spent
the winter of 1535-1536 stranded in the ice at the mouth of the Saint
Charles river, where later on Quebec city would grow up. The area was
colonised by the French in 1608, when explorer and navigator Samuel
Champlain set up the colony of New France near the mouth of the Saint
Charles, which is situated where the broad Saint Lawrence estuary
narrows to be more like a river. Champlain used Quebec as a base from
which to explore far up the Saint Lawrence river, and the area of the
Great Lakes beyond. In 1624 he began work on the first protective walls
to defend the settlement at Quebec from the English and from Indians.
In 1629, Quebec was surrendered to the English, but in 1632,
under terms of the Treaty of Saint Germain en Laye, it was returned to
the French, and work began, still under Champlain, to further develop
New France. New France comprised all of France's territories in North
America, stretching from the Hudson Bay area to Louisiana. Quebec
was the capital and administrative centre of the whole colony, but in
particular of the administrative division of New France which was given
the name
Canada,
a local Iroquois word meaning "settlement". For the next
century and a half, the colony of New France developed, albeit slowly.
In 1663 it was declared a Royal Province, and although the early
settlers from France had included many Protestant Huguenots, including
Champlain, colonisation of the new colony was henceforth limited to
Catholics. Its history was intimately bound into the history
of Europe, as the main European powers of the 17th century, England,
France and Spain, fought out their conflicts not just in Europe but in
the New World too.
In 1713, the Treaty of Utrecht brought a degree of
peace to Europe after the years of warring between the French and the
Spanish Hapsburg Empire, supported by the English. The size of New
France was reduced, and Quebec remained the capital of the French royal
province. By 1720 some 25,000 people lived in French Canada; but there
were continual conflicts between the English settlers of New England,
and the French settlers of New France; there was commercial rivalry,
and rivalries that accompanied historic tensions between the different
Indian nations that inhabited the area. In 1759, as Europe was plunged
in the "Seven Years' War", English forces under General Wolfe besieged
and then captured the settlement at Quebec, after storming the
fortifications on the Heights of Abraham. In the treaty of Quebec, that
put an end to the Seven Years' War, most of New France was handed over
to England, and the history of Quebec, as part of the English colony of
Canada, began.
After inclusion into British Canada, Quebec
retained most of its identity. The people continued to speak French,
and a French-style legal system continued. In 1774, the
Quebec Act, passed by the British parliament, endowed Quebec with an
unusual "bijuridicial" legal system, in which the old French tradition
remains for civil law, while criminal law is administered according to
the principles of English common law. Thus, modern Quebec is a unique
blending of old French and British traditions and systems, a
French-speaking province whose official head of state is the Queen of
England, a place where they speak French, but use English or American
measurements, and live a lifestyle that arguably now owes more to the
United States and the rest of Canada than to either France or England,
but is different from
all three. In short, an interesting and intriguing place to
visit.
Photo top
of page - With
roots going back to the sixteenth century, Quebec city is the best
preserved old city in North America
Old Montreal.
► More
information :
More about Quebec
►
Driving in Quebec
Tips
and useful information for visitors from other parts
► Skiing
and winter sports
Like
the Alps without jetlag - a choice of the best ski areas in
Quebec
► North of the St Lawrence
One
of the finest road trips in America, a journey up Quebec's beautiful
highway 138
► Quebec city
Discover
the most historic and most European of major cities in North America
► Gaspésie
Quebec's
fabulously beautiful southeastern peninsula
Coming up:
- Quebec in winter
- The Saint Lawrence
- Northern Quebec
- Québecois - the language of Quebec
Discover
other countries...
About France
- the connoisseur's guide to France. Over 200 pages of information for
visitors
and students.
About the USA
- an essential guide for visiting the USA.
About Britain
- A thematic visitor guide to Britain
About Spain
- discover the real Spain - an alternative guide to Spain on
and off the beaten track
Gitelink - holiday cottage accommodation in France
Angleterre.org.uk
- Le guide de l'Angleterre, en français
Photo top of page
© TQ/Mathieu Dupuis,
Photo old Montreal by Wisshajj
Text and all other photos © About-Quebec.com