Top 10 Must-See Attractions Visit Québec City

Top 10 Must-See Attractions Visit Québec City

However, it is very easy to travel in Quebec speaking only English, especially in Montreal, Gatineau and to a lesser extent, Quebec City. In major cities like Montréal, this percentage is as high as 64%, and 16% of the population speaks a third language. As in any country, beginning a conversation in the local language is always a great way of making friends. Quebec’s official language is French; Québécois French is the regional variety. The economy of Quebec is mainly supported by its large service sector and varied industrial sector.

• Canadien-style houses and barns were developed by the first settlers of New France along the banks of the Saint Lawrence River.
• Historically, Montreal was known for being an oasis of English in an otherwise French-dominated province, due to its high population of wealthy Anglos — the descendants of British colonial settlers.
• The medium-sized land wildlife includes the cougar, the coyote, the eastern wolf, the bobcat, the Arctic fox, the fox, etc.
• Within cities, public transit tends to be good by North American standards, though showing the signs of insufficient public funding.
• The Moulin à paroles traces the great texts that have shaped the history of Quebec.

You will find travel resources, planning tips, & itineraries for visiting Canada. This blog also includes our personal experiences & stories from moving to living in this wonderful country since 2009. We hope you enjoyed learning about the province of Quebec and its popular cities. Quebec has everything you need for an epic getaway from natural to heritage sites, culinary to outdoorsy activities like hiking, bike tours, skiing, and tobogganing in the winter.

How to Dress for Winter Fun

Politics in Quebec are thus not terribly ideological, and most politicians support broadly similar social-democratic agendas. The mighty St. Lawrence River and skyline of Montreal as seen from Ile-Ste-Helene (St. Helen’s Island). Both of Quebec’s largest cities — the other being Quebec City — are located on the St. Lawrence coast. Postal codes for Québec begin with G (Québec City and eastern Québec), H (Montréal and Laval) and J (western Québec). An interesting oddity that you might notice in Quebec is that all KFCs in Quebec are called PFK.

Maps of Quebec

It supports creation, innovation, production, and international exhibits for all cultural fields of Quebec. The Société de développement des entreprises culturelles (SODEC) works to promote and fund individuals working in the cultural industry. The Prix du Québec is an award given by the government to confer the highest distinction and honour to individuals demonstrating exceptional achievement in their respective cultural field. Other awards include the Athanase David Awards (Literature), Félix Awards (Music), Gémeaux Awards (Television and film), Jutra Awards (Cinema), Masques Awards (Theatre), Olivier Guimond Awards (Humour) and the Opus Awards (Concert music). The combination of rich soils and the lowlands’ relatively warm climate makes this valley the most prolific agricultural area of Quebec. The rural part of the landscape is divided into narrow rectangular tracts of land that extend from the river and date back to the seigneurial system.

• Those who plan to work or immigrate will, in general, have to first apply for and receive approval from the Quebec government before they can lodge their visa application with the Canadian government.
• However, the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s to 1980s increased the role of the Government of Quebec in l’État québécois (the public authority of Quebec).
• For a variety of political and economic reasons many Anglos have chosen to leave in recent decades, however, and today only about 15% of Montrealers speak English as their first language.
• “La route verte” comprises 3,600 km (2,200 mi) of bikeways linking the various regions of Quebec.
• Today, politics are dominated by the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), which while having supported many economically left or interventionist policies, is said by experts to be centre-right.
• This ideology, known as separatism, really came into prominence during the 1960s, when a poorly-performing economy coupled with the post-Quiet Revolution culture of self-empowerment made previously unthinkable ideas suddenly more attractive.

Pin: Fun facts about Quebec Quebec City and Montreal

At that time James Bay, Hudson Bay, and the Ungava region belonged to the British Hudson’s Bay Company. In 1898 Quebec’s boundary was extended north to the Eastmain River and east to Labrador. Quebec’s present-day boundaries were determined in 1927, when the British Privy Council granted Labrador to Newfoundland (now the province of Newfoundland and Labrador).

Useful Tourism Information for Québec City

Another point at the western edge of the province, Abitibi-Témiscamingue, is reachable in a couple of hours from North Bay, Ontario by road. English-speaking Quebecers are generally bilingual and reside mostly in the Montreal area, where 25% of the population speaks English at home. Conversations between anglophones and francophones often slip unconsciously between English and French as a mutual show of respect. This can be confusing if you’re not bilingual, and a look of puzzlement will generally signal a switch back to a language everyone can understand. The first European to visit the area was French explorer Jacques Cartier, who was seeking a route to Asia as well as searching for valuable minerals such as gold and diamonds.

Québec has a vast road and air network that makes it easy to travel between cities. A few communities are directly on the provincial boundary, easily accessible by bicycle or even on foot. From Labrador, the Trans-Labrador Highway crosses into Québec at both of its endpoints, Labrador City-Fermont and Forteau-Blanc Sablon. Quebec Route 389 from Fermont to Baie-Comeau is rough gravel with (mostly) no services from Fermont to Manic 5. There is no road from Blanc-Sablon/Vieux-Fort to Kegaska, a 450-km gap bridged by a weekly coastal ferry. From the west in Ottawa, Highway 417 (in Ontario) / Autoroute 40 (in Quebec) travels to Montreal, and is a part of the Trans-Canada Highway.

The European variety—called “international French” or français international here—is well-understood and used to a certain degree, e.g. in broadcast media and among the international business community. Nonetheless, European tourists may feel lost until they grow accustomed to the local accents and idioms. Quebec stood alone in refusing to agree to the 1982 Canadian constitutional amendments, which ended up being adopted without the consent of the provincial government. These reforms abolished the remaining legal links with the United Kingdom and added a bill of rights to the Constitution known as the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Attempts to amend the Constitution in 1990 and 1992 to get Quebec’s agreement failed due to a lack of consensus.

The St. Lawrence and its tributaries gave the French the best access to the quebex interior of North America and control over the fur trade, an advantage that the British wanted to gain. In 1629 it was captured by the British, who held it until 1632, when the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye restored it to France. There were other attempts by the British to capture this stronghold, but all failed until the famous Battle of Quebec on the Plains of Abraham (adjacent to the city) in 1759, in which the French were defeated. Shortly thereafter most of the French-held territory in North America was ceded to Great Britain by the Treaty of Paris in 1763.