Quebec City Sites

Once again, our tour of Quebec City was too short to really learn much

Colors of fall above a marina

about the city; happily that requires a return trip! I was delighted to hear French spoken and gratified that I could make myself understood, at least enough to find a restroom and a gift shop. Although it wasn’t a particularly warm or sunny day, the old city was lovely, especially the Château Frontenac Hotel and its environs.






The Algonquian people had originally named the area Kébec, meaning ‘where the river narrows’, since this is where the Saint Lawrence River…narrows. Quebec City, one of the oldest European settlements in North 

Statue commemorating Samuel
de Champlain

America, is still surrounded by walls that were used in its early days to keep out marauders.  In 1541, explorer Jacques Cartier, along with some 400 followers, founded Fort Charlesbourg-Royal; however, the local weather and the natives were quite hostile, so the site was abandoned within the year. But if the French were to stay in North America, a fort had to be established, and indeed it was, relocated to near the mouth of the Rivière du Cap Rouge. Some 60 odd years later, Samuel de Champlain, a French explorer and diplomat, founded Quebec on the site of an abandoned St. Lawrence Iroquoian settlement, and this time the city prospered.








The icon of the old city is the Château Frontenac Hotel. This hotel along with the Old City of Quebec was named a Canadian National Historic Site in January 1981 and a UNESCO site in 1985. But Château Frontenac was not the first hotel built on this spot. Built during the 1780s the

Top L and R: Exterior of the hotel
Bottom L to R: Interior of the hotel, Street in the Old City

Château Haldimand overlooked the city and hosted visitors for about 100 years, then the British governor general of Canada decided it was time to restore the capital city to the architecture from the 17^th century. This plan floundered, due to lack of leadership and money, until business men with connections to the Canadian Pacific Railway took control. The hotel was designed by American architect Bruce Price with William Van Horne, the general manager and a key developer of Canadian Pacific Railway's hotel system, overseeing the construction. The Châteauesque architectural style used throughout the hotel has the typical asymmetrical profile, steeply pitched roofs, massive circular and polygonal towers and turrets, ornate gables and dormers, and tall chimneys, The Château Frontenac is one of Canada's grand railway hotels; it would serve as a prototype for other Canadian grand railway hotels built in the late-18^th to early-20^th  centuries. The outside of the hotel is mostly grey stone ashlar, with steel spines running up the building. Inside there are mahogany paneling, marble staircases, carved stone, wrought iron, and glass roundels everywhere you look. While there are Gothic elements in the architecture, the hotel also pulls in Victorian style architectural elements, as well. While the Château Frontenac was completed in 1893, the last of the Canadian Pacific Railway's Chateauesque hotels was completed a mere five years later in 1908. The Château Frontenac hotel was expanded in 1924 and again in 1993. Between these two expansions/ renovations, in 1943 and 1944 the First and Second Quebec Conferences were held and attended by World War II Allies including President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. A less illustrious group met in 1953 for the filming of Alfred Hitchcock's film, I Confess, starring Montgomery Clift and Anne Baxter.

The Plains of Abraham are not far from old Quebec. The battle fought here decided, at least for a moment, who would control Quebec. This

A portion of the Plains of Abraham

campagne has a host of names: the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, the Battle of Quebec, or if you prefer the French, Bataille des Plaines d'Abraham, et Première bataille de Québec. It was one of the pivotal encounters in the Seven Years' War or if you lived in the US, the French and Indian War. This engagement was fought on September 13, 1759, by the British Army and Navy against the French Army on land owned Abraham Martin, hence the name of the battle. There were less than 10,000 troops between both sides, but the conflict decided the destiny of New France. The culmination of a three-month siege by the British, the fighting lasted only about an hour. Both General James Wolfe and General Louis-Joseph Marquis de Montcalm were fatally wounded during the battle. Wolfe died at the beginning of the fighting, moments after being wounded by three gunshots; Montcalm died the next morning from a musket ball wound just below his ribs. In the wake of the battle, the French surrendered to the British forces. However, the Battle of Sainte-Foy, also called the Battle of Quebec, was fought on April 28, 1760. This time the French, led by Chevalier de Lévis (François-Gaston), went into combat against General James Murray and the British; the French won. There were many more casualties than in the Battle of the Plains of Abraham; 833 French lost their lives, as did 1,124 British soldiers. Quebec City was returned to the French and has been the capital of Quebec province ever since.

Since it was close to Halloween, the decorations in gardens and parks abounded. Evidently the folks in Quebec like this holiday as well as the people in the states.

L to R: Painted trees, Ghost and weeping willow

Now on to Saguenay and our coldest, wettest day of the trip…

Fall colors near Quebec City

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