The Honguedo Strait ( French: ''Détroit d'Honguedo'') is a strait in eastern

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

, Canada, flowing between

Anticosti Island ; moe, Notiskuan; mic, Natigostec , sobriquet = , image_name = RiviereHuileAnticosti.jpg , image_caption = Salmon fisherman on Rivière à l'Huile , image_map ...

and the Gaspé Peninsula. It is one of the two outlets of the

Saint Lawrence River The St. Lawrence River (french: Fleuve Saint-Laurent, ) is a large river in the middle latitudes of North America. Its headwaters begin flowing from Lake Ontario in a (roughly) northeasterly direction, into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, connectin ...

into its

estuary An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime environm ...

, the

Gulf of Saint Lawrence , image = Baie de la Tour.jpg , alt = , caption = Gulf of St. Lawrence from Anticosti National Park, Quebec , image_bathymetry = Golfe Saint-Laurent Depths fr.svg , alt_bathymetry = Bathymetry ...

. The other is the

Jacques Cartier Strait The Jacques Cartier Strait (French: ''Détroit de Jacques-Cartier'') is a strait in eastern Quebec, Canada, flowing between Anticosti Island and the Labrador Peninsula. It is one of the two outlets of the Saint Lawrence River into its estuary, the ...

on the north side of

Anticosti Island ; moe, Notiskuan; mic, Natigostec , sobriquet = , image_name = RiviereHuileAnticosti.jpg , image_caption = Salmon fisherman on Rivière à l'Huile , image_map ...

. The Honguedo Strait is approximately wide at its narrowest point. The name Honguedo first appeared in the reports of Jacques Cartier of 1535–1536. In the 16th century, it was known as the Saint-Pierre Strait, especially on maps by

Gerardus Mercator Gerardus Mercator (; 5 March 1512 – 2 December 1594) was a 16th-century geographer, cosmographer and Cartography, cartographer from the County of Flanders. He is most renowned for creating the Mercator 1569 world map, 1569 world map based on ...

(1569) and Cornelius Wytfliet (1597). Only by the 20th century, Honguedo came into use, and in 1934, the Geographic Board of Quebec officially adopted it to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Jacques Cartier's arrival in North America. Yet, the origin of the name is uncertain; it may derive from the

Mi'kmaq The Mi'kmaq (also ''Mi'gmaq'', ''Lnu'', ''Miꞌkmaw'' or ''Miꞌgmaw''; ; ) are a First Nations people of the Northeastern Woodlands, indigenous to the areas of Canada's Atlantic Provinces and the Gaspé Peninsula of Quebec as well as the nort ...

word for "gathering place", or from the

Iroquois The Iroquois ( or ), officially the Haudenosaunee ( meaning "people of the longhouse"), are an Iroquoian-speaking confederacy of First Nations peoples in northeast North America/ Turtle Island. They were known during the colonial years to ...

word ''hehonguesto'', meaning "one's own nose".

References

Straits of Quebec Landforms of Gaspésie–Îles-de-la-Madeleine {{Quebec-geo-stub