QUEBEC CITY - THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM
Quebec City is one of the oldest European settlements in North America. It is the first city to have been founded with the goal of receiving permanent settlement, and not as a commercial outpost, and therefore is considered to be the first European-built city in non-Spanish North America.
Quebec was founded by Samuel de Champlain on 3 July 1608 at the site of a long abandoned St. Lawrence Iroquoian settlement called Stadacona. It was to this settlement that the name Canada refers.
Although called the cradle of the Francophone population in North America, the Acadian settlement at Port-Royal antedates it. The place seemed favourable to the establishment of a permanent colony.
Quebec City was captured by the British in 1759 and held until 1763. It was the site of BATTLE OF THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM during the SEVEN YEARS' WAR, in which British troops under General WOLFE defeated the French general MONTCALM and took the city. France ceded New France, including the city, to Britain in 1763.
MONTREAL - OLD MONTREAL
In 1639 a permanent settlement was created by a French tax collector named Jerome Le Royer. Under the authority of the Roman Catholic Société Notre-Dame, Paul Chomedey de Maisoneuve, Jeanne Mance and a few French colonists set up a mission named Ville Marie on May 17, 1642.
On January 4, 1648, de Maisonneuve granted Pierre Gadois the first concession of land - some 40 acres. In November of 1653, another 140 individuals arrived to enlarge the settlement that eventually became known as Montreal.
Francois Dollier de Casson ordered the first survey of Montreal, creating the street layout of what is now known as OLD MONTREAL. The town was fortified in 1725 and remained French until 1760, when, during the SEVEN YEARS WAR, Pierre Francoise e Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil-Cavagnal surrendered it to the British army under Jeffrey Amherst. Fire destroyed one quarter of the town on May 18, 1765. The fortifications were demolished in 1821.
Architecture and cobbled streets in Old Montreal have been maintained or restored to keep the look of the city in its earliest days as a settlement, and horse-drawn caleches help maintain that image.
Finally, the old town's riverbank is completely taken up by the Old Port (Vieux-Port), whose maritime facilities are surrounded with a vast recreational space with a variety of museums and attractions.
OTTAWA - PARLIAMENT HILL
PARLIAMENT HILL is an area of Crown land on the southern banks of the Ottawa River in downtown Ottawa, Ontario. Its Gothic revival suite of buildings – the parliament buildings – serves as the home of the Parliament of Canada, and contains a number of architectural elements of national symbolic importance. Parliament Hill attracts approximately 3 million visitors each year.
Originally the site of a military base in the 18th and early 19th centuries, development of the site into a governmental precinct began in 1859, after BYTOWN was chosen by QUEEN VICTORIA as the capital of the PROVINCE OF CANADA.
Following a number of extensions to the parliament and departmental buildings, and a fire in 1916 that destroyed the Centre Block, Parliament Hill took on its present form with the completion of the PEACE TOWER in 1927.
July 2, 2009
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