Around Québec

This gallery features photos taken in smaller towns in Québec as well as Québec City and Montréal.

In the 15th century, the Byzantine Empire fell, prompting Western Europeans to search for new sea routes to the Far East. Around 1522–23, Giovanni da Verrazzano persuaded King Francis I of France to commission an expedition to find a western route to Cathay (China) via a Northwest Passage. Though this expedition was unsuccessful, it established the name New France for northeast North America. In his first expedition ordered from the Kingdom of France, Jacques Cartier became the first European explorer to discover and map Quebec when he landed in Gaspé on July 24, 1534.

Ancestors of today’s Indigenous people were the first to establish themselves on the lands of Québec, arriving after the Laurentide Ice Sheet melted roughly 11,000 years ago. By the European explorations of the 1500s, there were eleven Indigenous peoples: the Inuit and ten First Nations – the Abenaki, Algonquin (or Anichinabés), Atikamekw, Cree, Huron-Wyandot, Wolastoqiyik, Miꞌkmaq, Iroquois, Innu and Naskapi.

Between 1534 and 1763, what is now Québec was the French colony of Canada and was the most developed colony in New France.

Today, Québec is Canada's largest province by area with the only Francophone-majority in the country. Québec has a population of around 8 million, making it Canada's second-most populous province only behind Ontario.

Locations: Québec
Date: Various