Québec, Canada — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Québec known for?

It is the only Francophone-majority province in Canada, carrying the Québécois French language, which sets its culture apart from the mainly English-speaking provinces around it. Scale matters too. The largest province by area, it stretches from the United States border in the south across Central Canada, sharing its western edge with Ontario and its northeast with Newfoundland and Labrador.

Where is Québec?

Québec is the largest province in Canada by area, a vast block of Central Canada that runs from the United States border in the south to the far north. It is enormous. The province shares its western edge with Ontario, its northeast with Newfoundland and Labrador, and its southeast with New Brunswick, while a long coastal boundary faces the territory of Nunavut.

Borders shape it on every side. Most of that territory lies north of the settled belt, thinly peopled and immense, so that the Québec most travellers see is the southern strip near the United States, where Montréal and the main towns lie. The scale runs far past the map a visitor uses.

What is Québec like?

Québec's culture is defined by its language. It is the only Francophone-majority province in Canada, and Québécois French shapes its public life, its institutions and its sense of itself apart from the rest of the country. Language is the dividing line.

Where the provinces around it, from Ontario to New Brunswick, run mainly in English, Québec conducts its schooling, its government and its daily business in French. That difference gives the province a character of its own. Rooted in Central Canada yet turned toward a French tradition, Québec keeps a culture that its neighbours do not share, expressed above all in the Québécois French language and the society built around it.

It stands apart. The francophone identity, more than any single landmark, is what defines the province to the wider country.

What is the history of Québec?

Québec was established as a province of Canada in 1867. That year fixed its modern borders. It joined the country as one of its original provinces, but unlike the others it carried a French-speaking majority and the Québécois French language into the union.

The distinction has lasted. From that founding, Québec has held its place as the largest province by area and the only French-majority province within Canada.

What is the climate of Québec?

Québec has a temperate climate marked by long, hard winters. Its inland position in Central Canada, far from any moderating ocean, brings deep cold and heavy snow through the winter months and warm summers in the settled south near the United States. The swing is wide.

Farther north the cold turns longer and deeper still, so that the province spans a broad range of conditions from its southern towns to its far reaches.

How do you get to Québec?

Most visitors reach Québec through Montréal, the province's largest city, in the settled south. Flights converge there. From Montréal, road and rail run through the southern belt near the United States border and on toward the rest of Central Canada, while the vast north is reached only by longer routes.

One city carries the arrivals.