Quebec City

The site was an Iroquoian village called Stadacona when Jacques Cartier wintered nearby, and in 1541 he founded Charlesbourg-Royal at the mouth of the Cap Rouge river, abandoned within a year. On 3 July 1608 Samuel de Champlain founded a permanent French post on the abandoned site of Stadacona and kept the Algonquin name Kébec, "where the river narrows". It grew slowly: English privateers under David Kirke captured it in 1629 and handed it back in 1632, and in 1665 it had about 550 people, a quarter of them priests, nuns and other members of religious orders. As capital of New France it repelled an English attack in 1690 and served as the base for raids on New England.

On 13 September 1759 British troops under James Wolfe defeated Louis-Joseph de Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham and took the city; a French victory at Sainte-Foy the next spring did not reverse the result, and France ceded the colony in 1763. An American assault failed in 1775, and fear of another led the British to build the Citadelle from 1820. Shipbuilding and timber exports made the 19th century a golden age, the Quebec Conference of 1864 prepared Confederation, and in 1867 the city became capital of the new province.

Decline followed from the 1870s, as steamships, railways and the rise of Montreal drew trade away, and the British garrison left in 1871; English speakers, about 40 per cent of the population in 1861, fell to 16 per cent by 1901. The Allied leaders met here in 1943 and 1944. Old Quebec became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985, the suburbs were merged into the city in 2002, and the city celebrated its 400th anniversary in 2008.

Quebec City is one of the most thoroughly French-speaking cities in North America: about nine in ten residents grew up speaking only French, and native English speakers are around one in seventy. Its identity is bound up with its role as the cradle of French-speaking North America and as the national capital of Quebec, and the Catholic past is everywhere in its convents, seminaries and churches, even as religious practice has declined. The Wendat Nation lives at Wendake, an enclave within the city's northern borough.

The calendar is built around big public gatherings. Carnaval, held every year since 1955, fills the coldest weeks with an ice palace, snow sports and the mascot Bonhomme Carnaval in his red toque and arrowed sash. On 24 June the city celebrates the Fête nationale, and in mid-July the Festival d'été de Québec, founded in 1968, puts international stars on the largest outdoor stage in Canada.

Hockey matters deeply. The Nordiques, rivals of the Montreal Canadiens, left for Denver in 1995, and the Videotron Centre was built partly in the hope of an NHL team returning; meanwhile the Remparts in junior hockey, Université Laval's Rouge et Or and the Capitales de Québec baseball team draw crowds. Charles Dickens called the fortified rock "the Gibraltar of North America", and the city remains proud of its history, its walls and its difference from Montreal.

About 550,000 people lived in the city at the 2021 census, and about 840,000 in the wider metropolitan area, making it the second city of the province after Montreal. The population is older than the Canadian average, and immigrants made up 8.5 per cent of residents in 2021; France, Colombia, Morocco, Ivory Coast and Cameroon were the leading countries of origin.

As the provincial capital, the city lives largely on government: the provincial administration is the biggest employer, followed by the hospital network, and public administration, defence, services, commerce, transport and tourism account for most jobs. Insurance companies, engineering firms and a cluster of video game studios in Saint-Roch add private employers, and Université Laval in Sainte-Foy is the main university. Unemployment has been among the lowest of Canada's large cities, and so has crime.

Since the 2002 mergers the city stretches from the old core into suburbs such as Sainte-Foy, Charlesbourg and Beauport, where most families live in houses and drive. Sillery, Cap-Rouge and Sainte-Foy are the wealthiest districts; the old working-class quarters of Saint-Roch, Saint-Sauveur and Limoilou have gentrified over the past two decades. Public transport has long been a political question: a tramway was planned, paused in 2023, and its first line, from Le Gendre to Charlesbourg, began construction in 2026.

The city eats in the Québécois tradition of hearty winter food. Tourtière, a spiced meat pie, is the classic, alongside pâté chinois, a layered dish of beef, corn and mashed potato, and fèves au lard, beans baked with salt pork and maple. Poutine, chips with squeaky cheese curds and gravy, is everywhere, from snack bars to bistros. Crêperies are a fixture of Rue Saint-Jean, a reminder of the French roots of the city's cooking.

Maple is the defining flavour. Syrup is sold in every shop in the old town, desserts include tarte au sucre, a sugar pie, and pouding chômeur, a pudding baked in maple syrup, and in late winter and early spring the cabanes à sucre in the countryside serve tire d'érable, boiling syrup poured onto snow to set as taffy. Cheese from the farms around the city is sold in delicatessens and markets, and the province's cidre de glace, ice cider made from frozen apples, is widely sold.

The Grand Marché de Québec, opened at ExpoCité in 2019 after the old port market closed, gathers local producers, cheesemakers and food stalls in one hall. Eating out ranges from the touristic restaurants of the old town to the bistros of Saint-Jean-Baptiste and Saint-Roch and the terraces of the Grande Allée, which fill on summer evenings.