50 Fun Facts About Quebec

Thieves siphoned nearly 3,000 tonnes of what from a Quebec strategic reserve in 2011 and 2012?

Maple syrup worth about C$18.7 million vanished in the heist, drained barrel by barrel over several months. Quebec producers supply roughly three-quarters of the world's syrup.

Which Quebec dish, born in rural 1950s snack bars, tops French fries with cheese curds and gravy?

Poutine was created in the Centre-du-Québec region, where the towns of Warwick and Drummondville each claim the restaurant that served it first.

Which circus company was founded by two street performers in Baie-Saint-Paul, Quebec, in 1984?

Cirque du Soleil grew out of a troupe of stilt walkers. One founder once walked 90 km to Quebec City on stilts to win government funding for an early show.

Which singer, the youngest of 14 children, grew up in the small Quebec town of Charlemagne?

Céline Dion was a teen star in Quebec long before the wider world noticed. She then won the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest singing for Switzerland.

Which Beatle recorded Give Peace a Chance in a Montreal hotel room during a 1969 bed-in?

John Lennon and Yoko Ono spent a week in bed at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, inviting reporters and famous guests who joined in on the recording.

Which escape artist took stomach punches in a Montreal dressing room days before dying in 1926?

Harry Houdini died nine days later of peritonitis. Whether the blows he took at the Princess Theatre caused it has been argued over ever since.

Who starred for the Montreal Royals in 1946, a year before breaking baseball's colour barrier?

Jackie Robinson won the Junior World Series with the Royals that season, and exultant Montreal fans chased him down the street after the final game.

Which stylised flower appears four times around the white cross on Quebec's blue provincial flag?

The fleur-de-lis gives the flag its French name, the Fleurdelisé. Unveiled in 1948, it was the first provincial flag officially adopted in Canada.

Which Quebec City hotel, opened by a railway in 1893, is called the most photographed in the world?

Château Frontenac is one of the grand hotels the Canadian Pacific Railway built across Canada, and during the Second World War it housed secret Allied planning talks.

Which American general, who later joined the British, was shot in the leg attacking Quebec City?

Benedict Arnold attacked in a blinding New Year's Eve snowstorm. The assault failed, and his fellow commander, General Montgomery, was killed.

Which whale lives year-round in Quebec's St. Lawrence estuary, far south of its Arctic relatives?

Beluga whales are nicknamed sea canaries for their squeaks, clucks and whistles, and the St. Lawrence group is one of the few that never migrates.

Old Quebec's ramparts make Quebec City the only walled city in North America north of which country?

Mexico marks the line: no other city in the United States or Canada still has its fortified walls. The ramparts helped make Old Quebec a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985.

Quebec is Canada's second most populous province, behind which neighbour on its western border?

Ontario and Quebec were governed together as the Province of Canada from 1841 to 1867, with the capital moving between cities in both halves.

What generates over 90 percent of Quebec's electricity, much of it in the remote James Bay region?

Hydropower from the James Bay rivers also runs south on a dedicated line to help power the Boston area. Quebec generates more hydroelectricity than any other Canadian province.

Which winter vehicle did Quebec mechanic Joseph-Armand Bombardier pioneer in his Valcourt workshop?

Snowmobile sales took off with the 1959 Ski-Doo, which was meant to be called the Ski-Dog until a printing error changed the name.

Winston Churchill met which US president at two secret wartime conferences held in Quebec City?

Roosevelt and Churchill used the first meeting, in August 1943, to agree to start planning Operation Overlord, the invasion of France that became D-Day.

Which 14-year-old gymnast scored the first perfect 10 in Olympic history at the 1976 Montreal Games?

Nadia Comaneci broke the scoreboard's logic: it had not been programmed to show a 10, so her perfect mark appeared as 1.00.

Which French president cheered on Quebec independence from a Montreal city hall balcony in 1967?

Charles de Gaulle cut his state visit short amid the uproar and flew home without keeping his appointment with the prime minister in Ottawa.

Which Montreal-born poet and singer wrote Hallelujah, a song covered by hundreds of other artists?

Leonard Cohen was born in Westmount, an English-speaking enclave of the city, and first released the song on his 1984 album Various Positions.

Which Montreal-born actor studied commerce at McGill before playing Captain Kirk in Star Trek?

William Shatner was born in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighbourhood, and McGill later awarded him an honorary doctorate of letters.

Which French explorer, remembered as the Father of New France, founded Quebec City in 1608?

Samuel de Champlain crossed the Atlantic more than 20 times in his career, and a long lake on the New York–Vermont border still carries his name.

Which explorer from Saint-Malo sailed up the St. Lawrence in 1535 and gave Canada its name?

Jacques Cartier heard the Iroquoian word kanata, meaning village, from people living near present-day Quebec City, and applied it to the whole region.

On which plateau outside Quebec City's walls did British troops defeat the French in a 1759 battle?

The Plains of Abraham take their name from Abraham Martin, a farmer who once owned the land. Both commanding generals were mortally wounded in the fighting.

Which waterfall just outside Quebec City stands about 30 metres taller than Niagara Falls?

Montmorency Falls drops 83 metres over a cliff into the St. Lawrence River, opposite the western end of the Île d'Orléans.

Quebec's motto Je me souviens, on every licence plate since 1978, translates into English as what?

I remember is the literal meaning. The architect who had the motto carved on the parliament building in 1883 appears to have left no account of what should be remembered.

Which Quebec town, named for the mineral it mined, voted in 2020 to become Val-des-Sources?

Asbestos grew up around the Jeffrey Mine, once the world's largest source of the mineral, and dropped the name because of its negative connotations.

Unlike the rest of Quebec, the island of Montreal bans drivers from doing what at a red light?

Turning right on a red was illegal across the province until a 2003 pilot study found it caused few extra accidents. Montreal, like New York City, kept its ban.

Montreal's Metro trains, modelled on a Paris design, run on what instead of ordinary steel wheels?

Rubber tires let the trains climb steeper grades and accelerate faster than steel wheels would, which is why the engineers copied the idea from the Paris Métro.

Montreal-style bagels are boiled in water sweetened with what before going into a wood-fired oven?

Honey in the water helps make the bagels sweeter, and they come out smaller, thinner and denser than the New York kind, with a larger hole.

Which 1998 disaster felled over 1,000 transmission towers and left millions in Quebec without power?

An ice storm coated power lines until they snapped under the weight. The relief effort became Canada's largest military deployment since the Korean War.

What is the name for the 1960s era when Quebec secularised its schools and nationalised electricity?

The Quiet Revolution began when Jean Lesage's Liberals won the 1960 election, within a year of the death of the long-serving conservative premier Duplessis.

Which ex-journalist founded the Parti Québécois and led the Yes side in Quebec's 1980 referendum?

René Lévesque had been a war correspondent and television host before entering politics. His side lost the 1980 vote by roughly 60 percent to 40.

Which 1977 Quebec language law requires French to be markedly predominant on commercial signs?

Bill 101 is the everyday name of the Charter of the French Language, which has been amended more than six times, each time amid controversy.

Which 1970 emergency began when the FLQ kidnapped a British diplomat and a Quebec cabinet minister?

The October Crisis led Pierre Trudeau to invoke the War Measures Act, its first use in peacetime in Canadian history, and police detained 497 people.

Which Indigenous nation faced down police and soldiers for 78 days at Oka, Quebec, in 1990?

Mohawk protesters were blocking plans to build a golf course on a pine grove that included one of their burial grounds.

Which French king paid dowries for the filles du roi, about 800 women sent to New France from 1663?

Louis XIV sponsored the scheme for a decade because the colony had far more single men than women, and each bride's dowry was paid at the king's expense.

From 1791 to 1841, which British colony covered the southern part of modern Quebec?

Lower Canada took the 'lower' in its name from its position farther down the St. Lawrence River, even though it lies north-east of its upstream twin.

The 1774 Quebec Act restored which legal tradition, making Quebec's private law unique in Canada?

French civil law came back alongside guarantees for the colonists' religion, concessions that alarmed Britain's American colonies and helped push them toward independence.

Which is Canada's only officially bilingual province, a status French-only Quebec does not share?

New Brunswick made both English and French official in 1969, while Quebec recognises French as its sole official language.

Which world's fair, held on man-made islands at Montreal, marked Canada's centennial?

Expo 67 stood on islands built partly from rock dug out for the Montreal Metro, and its opening was broadcast to more than 700 million people worldwide.

Which Montreal Canadiens star's suspension in 1955 set off a riot in the streets around the Forum?

Maurice Richard, the Rocket, was banned for the rest of the season and the playoffs for hitting a linesman. Fans pelted the league president with eggs and vegetables.

The Quebec Nordiques hockey team moved to Denver in 1995 and took which new name?

The Colorado Avalanche won the Stanley Cup in their first season in Denver, the only NHL team ever to lift it the year after a move.

Which snowman mascot in a red cap and arrowed sash presides over the Quebec Winter Carnival?

Bonhomme is short for bonhomme de neige, French for snowman. He is described as seven feet tall and rules the festivities from an ice palace.

Quebec French swear words, called sacres, mostly come from the vocabulary of which institution?

The Catholic Church once held such sway over daily life in Quebec that words for the tabernacle and other sacred objects became the strongest curses in the language.

Which Quebec meat pie of minced pork, veal or beef is a fixture of the Christmas Eve réveillon?

Tourtière recipes change from region to region: some use finely minced meat, while eastern Quebec bakes deep-dish pies of cubed meat and potatoes.

Which Quebec peninsula, jutting into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, has Percé Rock at its tip?

Gaspé's Percé Rock is one of the world's largest natural arches standing in water, and its French name simply means pierced rock.

Which Quebec river flows through a deep fjord to join the St. Lawrence at Tadoussac?

The Saguenay is tidal for about 100 km, as far upriver as Chicoutimi, and Greenland sharks frequent the cold depths of its fjord.

Which ring-shaped lake, nicknamed the eye of Quebec, fills a crater blasted out by a meteorite?

Manicouagan is clearly visible from space. The meteorite, about 5 km wide, struck some 214 million years ago and left a ringed structure roughly 100 km across.

Montreal was founded in 1642 as a French settlement under what original name?

Ville-Marie means City of Mary, and the old name lives on as one of the modern city's boroughs.

Which Quebec island, larger than Prince Edward Island, did a French chocolate maker buy in 1895?

Anticosti became the private game preserve of chocolate maker Henri Menier, and the 220 white-tailed deer he released have multiplied into a herd of well over 100,000.