Quebec (Stadacona)
Quebec (Stadacona)
QUEBEC (STADACONA). Site of an Iroquois village named Stadacona (also called Kanata, the Iroquoian word for village, from which Canada gets its name) when first visited by Jacques Cartier in 1535, the town of Quebec was founded (and named) by Champlain in 1608. When captured by the British in 1629, the village—which served primarily as a trade and missionary center—had only two permanently settled families. Returned to France in 1632, Quebec was unsuccessfully besieged by Sir William Phips in 1690, and a large British expedition under Sir Hovenden Walker was shipwrecked in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1711 as it advanced on Quebec. The church Notre Dame des Victoires, begun in 1688 and finished in 1723, commemorates these British failures. The British under General James Wolfe captured Quebec in 1759 and the city passed into British hands, becoming the capital of Canada in 1763. Some 1,500 houses had been built in the Upper and Lower Town by 1775. (Construction of the citadel, located atop the 333-foot Cape Diamond, was not begun until 1823, but the place was well fortified.)
SEE ALSO Colonial Wars; Quebec Act.
revised by Michael Bellesiles