La Baie (French pronunciation: /
la bɛ/, Quebec French pronunciation: /
la be/) is one of three
boroughs
A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely.
History
In the Middle Ag ...
in the city of
Saguenay,
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. It was created during
Quebec's municipal reorganization in 2002. From 1976 to 2001, it was known as the Town of La Baie, a municipality composed of the Grande-Baie, Bagotville and Port-Alfred sectors.
It is located on the bank of the
Ha! Ha! Bay (French: ''baie des Ha! Ha!'') at the mouths of the
Ha! Ha! River (French: ''rivière Ha! Ha!'') and the
Mars River
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Roman god of war. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphe ...
(French: ''rivière à Mars''). La Baie was the first colony built in the
Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean region. It was founded by the
Société des Vingt et un who settled the area in 1838. The depth of the banks of the Ha! Ha! Bay's waterways facilitated the rapid development of the region's largest harbour facilities after the
railways
Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a pre ...
were built in 1910.
The borough's main sources of socio-economic development have been the
logging
Logging is the process of cutting, processing, and moving trees to a location for transport. It may include skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or logs onto trucks or skeleton cars.
Logging is the beginning of a supply chain ...
and the
pulp and paper
The pulp and paper industry comprises companies that use wood as raw material and produce pulp, paper, paperboard and other cellulose-based products.
Manufacturing process
The pulp is fed to a paper machine where it is formed as a paper web an ...
industries since the nineteenth and twentieth centuries respectively.
Aluminum
Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. It has ...
production began in the early 1980s. After the
Abitibi-Consolidated paper mill, one of the main employers of the borough, shut down in 2004, Saguenay's elected officials decided to invest in La Baie's tourism industry by building and operating a port of call for
cruise ships
Cruise ships are large passenger ships used mainly for vacationing. Unlike ocean liners, which are used for transport, cruise ships typically embark on round-trip voyages to various ports-of-call, where passengers may go on tours known as "s ...
in 2008.
Bagotville Airport, the main civilian airport in Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean, is also located in La Baie. The
Canadian Forces Base Bagotville
Canadian Forces Base Bagotville , commonly referred to as CFB Bagotville, and also known as Bagotville Airport or Saguenay-Bagotville Airport, is a Canadian Forces base located west of Bagotville in the city of Saguenay. Located in the centre ...
, which shares the same airfield, is one of only two Canadian military bases that use the
Royal Canadian Air Force
The Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF; french: Aviation royale canadienne, ARC) is the air and space force of Canada. Its role is to "provide the Canadian Forces with relevant, responsive and effective airpower". The RCAF is one of three environm ...
's
CF-18 fighters. The military base is the borough's largest employer.
While
Chicoutimi and
Jonquière, the two boroughs that constitute the main urban core of Saguenay, are located close to each other, La Baie is at a moderate distance from the city centre. This has created some unique issues for the borough — for example, while a full-power television or radio station in Saguenay can serve the entire city from a single transmitter without difficulty, La Baie is distant enough from the city's urban core that some low-power broadcasters, such as
CKAJ-FM, have had to add separate transmitters to rebroadcast their signals in La Baie.
History
Exploration of Ha! Ha! Bay
The Saguenay's
nomadic Innu
The Innu / Ilnu ("man", "person") or Innut / Innuat / Ilnuatsh ("people"), formerly called Montagnais from the French colonial period ( French for "mountain people", English pronunciation: ), are the Indigenous inhabitants of territory in the ...
tribes once inhabited La Baie. The Chicoutimians lived on the banks of the
Saguenay River well before
European colonization
The historical phenomenon of colonization is one that stretches around the globe and across time. Ancient and medieval colonialism was practiced by the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Turks, and the Arabs.
Colonialism in the modern sense began ...
. Unlike important meeting places like
Chicoutimi, Ha! Ha! Bay was far from portages to
Saint-Jean Lake (French: ''lac St-Jean'') and was not frequented by
First Nations or the region's
first explorers.
[Russel Bouchard and Normand Perron, ''Chicoutimi : la formation d'une métropole régionale'', 1988, 78 pages.]
Although it was not on eighteenth century
fur trade
The fur trade is a worldwide industry dealing in the acquisition and sale of animal fur. Since the establishment of a world fur market in the early modern period, furs of boreal, polar and cold temperate mammalian animals have been the mos ...
routes, Ha! Ha! Bay was used by the
Hudson's Bay Company
The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC; french: Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson) is a Canadian retail business group. A fur trading business for much of its existence, HBC now owns and operates retail stores in Canada. The company's namesake business div ...
's commercial fishing boats at the mouths of the Ha! Ha! (Wissuscoué) and Mars (Vasigamenke) Rivers.
In 1828, the
Crown mandated land surveyor J.-B. Proulx to explore the bay area; he later reported on its hilly landscapes and logging potential.
Colonization was impossible during this period since the Hudson's Bay Company held exclusive rights to natural resources in the region since 1821,
a monopoly which would only expire in 1842. It was popular pressure from
Charlevoix and especially
La Malbaie that led to the tenuous beginnings of colonization in the Saguenay region. After an 1829 report
demonstrating the fertility levels of the region's soil, a petition asking for permission to settle the Saguenay region began to circulate in La Malbaie.
The government refused it and ordered further explorations of the region between 1829 and 1836, hoping to find a land link between
Ha! Ha! Bay and
Baie-Saint-Paul. A second petition was launched in 1835,
which led to the government and the Hudson's Bay Company to finally cede cutting rights to a company from La Malbaie
called the
Société des Vingt et un.
The company's schooner sailed from La Malbaie on April 25, 1838,
and made several stopovers along the banks of the Saguenay. After setting up temporary camps near
Tadoussac, they built their first sawmill at
L'Anse St-Jean.
Their goal was to reach Ha! Ha! Bay to build a permanent facility.
Bagot Township and the evolution of Grande-Baie and Bagotville
The
Société des vingt et un arrived in what is now the
Grande-Baie sector on June 11, 1838.
After surveying the forest and assessing its potential, the colonists built the first lock on the
Ha! Ha! River. In October of that same year, they completed the first
sawmill
A sawmill (saw mill, saw-mill) or lumber mill is a facility where logs are cut into lumber. Modern sawmills use a motorized saw to cut logs lengthwise to make long pieces, and crosswise to length depending on standard or custom sizes (dimensi ...
and created the foundation of what would become Grande-Baie.
The first families arrived during the fall,
and
jack pine
Jack pine (''Pinus banksiana'') is an eastern North American pine. Its native range in Canada is east of the Rocky Mountains from the Mackenzie River in the Northwest Territories to Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, and the north-central and ...
and
Eastern white pine
''Pinus strobus'', commonly called the eastern white pine, northern white pine, white pine, Weymouth pine (British), and soft pine is a large pine native to eastern North America. It occurs from Newfoundland, Canada west through the Great Lakes ...
logging operations began in 1839.
The hydraulic power of the two main rivers, Ha! Ha! and Mars, and the bay's tributaries was used to run several sawmills.
Mars Simard, a resident of
Baie-Saint-Paul, opened his own sawmill on the
Mars River
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Roman god of war. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphe ...
and founded Bagotville, the bay's second settlement.
Colonists from Baie-Saint-Paul moved to the new outpost, while those from
La Malbaie preferred Grande-Baie, which had 110 inhabitants in 1839.
The Société des Vingt et un began to struggle after it lost two years worth of cutting when
log-booms breached in 1840 and 1841.
Their main purchaser, an
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
wood merchant named
William Price, acquired all of the company's shares in 1842. He also bought the Mars Simard sawmill in 1843,
making Price the owner of every sawmill in lower Saguenay.
The end of the
Hudson's Bay Company
The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC; french: Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson) is a Canadian retail business group. A fur trading business for much of its existence, HBC now owns and operates retail stores in Canada. The company's namesake business div ...
's exclusive lease allowed the lawful colonization of the Saguenay region to begin.
The territory organized itself independently and Jean-Baptiste Duberg
was mandated to
survey
Survey may refer to:
Statistics and human research
* Statistical survey, a method for collecting quantitative information about items in a population
* Survey (human research), including opinion polls
Spatial measurement
* Surveying, the techniq ...
land for the new Bagot Township (named after
Sir Charles Bagot)
and divide county seats for the new constituency.
Duberg was also responsible for mapping a road to
Chicoutimi during the summer of 1842, which would eventually become
Saint-Jean-Baptiste Boulevard and Grande-Baie Nord Boulevard.
The Bagot Township was structurally unique since its population was concentrated in two areas: Bagot Village (Grande-Baie) and Bagot Town (Bagotville).
John Kane, a land agent originally sent by the government to collect fees for use of Crown lands, became the township's first mayor in 1850.
The
Province of Canada
The Province of Canada (or the United Province of Canada or the United Canadas) was a British North America, British colony in North America from 1841 to 1867. Its formation reflected recommendations made by John Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham ...
created the counties of Tadoussac and Chicoutimi in 1844.
The region's first school was built between the Ha! Ha! and Mars Rivers to serve the bay's two population hubs.
The
clergy
Clergy are formal leaders within established religions. Their roles and functions vary in different religious traditions, but usually involve presiding over specific rituals and teaching their religion's doctrines and practices. Some of the ter ...
began to register the population of Grande-Baie in 1842 and Bagotville in 1845.
On October 15, 1844, the
Oblates
In Christianity (especially in the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and Methodist traditions), an oblate is a person who is specifically dedicated to God or to God's service.
Oblates are individuals, either laypersons or clergy, normally livi ...
arrived in Grande-Baie to found a mission.
A fire destroyed most of the township in 1846. The parishes of Saint-Alexis-de-Grande-Baie and Saint-Alphonse-de-Bagotville were canonically erected in 1857 and 1861 respectively.
In 1851, the population around Ha! Ha! Bay reached 2,438; they mostly depended on
logging
Logging is the process of cutting, processing, and moving trees to a location for transport. It may include skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or logs onto trucks or skeleton cars.
Logging is the beginning of a supply chain ...
and
agriculture
Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...
for their livelihoods.
Grande-Baie built its first post office in 1855,
and was proclaimed a municipality in 1860.
Bagotville became incorporated in 1876 and Grande-Baie followed suit in 1908.
Agriculture began to develop rapidly during the 1850s and focused mainly on cereal production. The blueberry harvest was also an important activity until the arrival of railways in
Chambord Chambord can refer to:
* Chambord (liqueur), a brand of raspberry-flavored liqueur
* Château de Chambord, a French ''château'' built in the 16th century
* Chambord, Loir-et-Cher, the French commune where the ''château'' is located
* Chambord, ...
near
St-Jean Lake in 1888.
An economic downturn occurred during this period and demand decreased for Saguenay
timber
Lumber is wood that has been processed into dimensional lumber, including beams and planks or boards, a stage in the process of wood production. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing (floors, wall panels, wi ...
.
In 1856, there were twenty-six small sawmills around the bay, in addition to the main ones on the Ha! Ha! and Mars Rivers.
The slowdown during the 1870s led many mills to shut down or convert from
pine
A pine is any conifer tree or shrub in the genus ''Pinus'' () of the family Pinaceae. ''Pinus'' is the sole genus in the subfamily Pinoideae. The World Flora Online created by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Missouri Botanical Garden accep ...
to
spruce
A spruce is a tree of the genus ''Picea'' (), a genus of about 35 species of coniferous evergreen trees in the family Pinaceae, found in the northern temperate and boreal (taiga) regions of the Earth. ''Picea'' is the sole genus in the subfami ...
.
Even though the logging industry experienced difficulties, the
dairy industry flourished; by 1894, the number of cheese factories had increased to six.
St-Urbain Road was opened in 1870 and connected Grande-Baie to
Baie-Saint-Paul.
Telegraphs
Telegraphs were an alternative rock band based in Brighton, England.
Biography
Formed in 2005, Telegraphs was made up of members Darcy Harrison (vocals), Hattie Williams (bass/vocals), Sam Bacon (drums), Darren LeWarne (guitar) and Aung Yay ...
linked the two towns in 1880.
In 1859, the first
jetty
A jetty is a structure that projects from land out into water. A jetty may serve as a breakwater, as a walkway, or both; or, in pairs, as a means of constricting a channel. The term derives from the French word ', "thrown", signifying somet ...
was built on Ha! Ha! Bay in Bagotville.
Three years later its first
quay was built, which was later purchased by the Canadian government in 1876.
Bagotville's marine facilities, which were mainly used by
Canada Steamship Lines, added a
shipyard
A shipyard, also called a dockyard or boatyard, is a place where ships are built and repaired. These can be yachts, military vessels, cruise liners or other cargo or passenger ships. Dockyards are sometimes more associated with maintenance a ...
in 1853.
Industrialization of Port-Alfred and the development from 1900 to 1976
The Saguenay region experienced a new phase of economic development after the arrival of railways in
Chicoutimi in 1893.
Journalist Joseph-Dominique Guay and banker
Julien-Édouard-Alfred Dubuc founded the
Compagnie de Pulpe de Chicoutimi in 1898. Because its activities soon became too extensive for Chicoutimi's port facilities, the company's directors decided to build a loading port on the
Ha! Ha! Bay to ship
pulp
Pulp may refer to:
* Pulp (fruit), the inner flesh of fruit
Engineering
* Dissolving pulp, highly purified cellulose used in fibre and film manufacture
* Pulp (paper), the fibrous material used to make paper
* Molded pulp, a packaging material
* ...
.
The Ha! Ha! Bay railway was built in 1909 to facilitate transport to the quay in Bagotville. The first train shipment was on December 13, 1910.
Some sawmills had difficulty staying afloat before the arrival of large industry. Price Sawmills, the largest on both the Ha! Ha! and Mars Rivers, closed their doors in 1904 and 1912 respectively.
However, other sectors of the forest industry were booming. From 1902 to 1913, the Battle Island Company operated a pulp debarking factory in Anse-à-Benjamin.
Several municipal infrastructure projects were built in the 1910s. Bagotville's first water system was completed in 1913. Soon
macadam
Macadam is a type of road construction, pioneered by Scottish engineer John Loudon McAdam around 1820, in which crushed stone is placed in shallow, convex layers and compacted thoroughly. A binding layer of stone dust (crushed stone from the o ...
was used to pave the roads around Bagotville's Saint-Alphonse Church.
In 1915, the municipal council adopted a by-law that implemented the use of electric lights.
Highway 381 was opened that same year.
Plans for a chemical pulp plant on Ha! Ha! Bay were drawn up by the Compagnie de Pulpe de Chicoutimi in 1914.
The company's director, J.-É.-A. Dubuc, travelled to
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
to attract capital. Although he found investors in
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
, the volatility caused by
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
delayed investment until 1916.
Ha! Ha! Bay Sulphite Company Limited was founded that very year to make the chemical pulp plant a reality. Two hydroelectric power stations were built on the Ha! Ha! River to supply the plant. In 1917, the company purchased two lots from Grande-Baie totalling five square kilometres.
Construction of the Port-Alfred plant began on June 12, 1916, and was completed August 30, 1917. On December 4 of that same year, the Saint-Édouard Parish was founded in Port-Alfred just prior to a formal request to separate the plant's land from Grande-Baie on December 29.
The plant began operating on April 18, 1918. Four days later, the village of Port-Alfred was founded. In 1918, Bagotville organized its own police force.
Industrialization
Industrialisation ( alternatively spelled industrialization) is the period of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an industrial society. This involves an extensive re-organisation of an econo ...
,
urbanization
Urbanization (or urbanisation) refers to the population shift from rural to urban areas, the corresponding decrease in the proportion of people living in rural areas, and the ways in which societies adapt to this change. It is predominantly t ...
, and the construction of over fifty homes in Port-Alfred officially changed the new village's status and it became Ha! Ha! Bay's first town on September 5, 1919. Bagotville obtained the same status on January 7, 1920.
Since the beginning of the 1910s, the bay area's population had doubled to 6,600 by 1921.
Meanwhile, the pulp and paper industry suffered a crisis of overproduction, leading to the rapid bankruptcy of the Compagnie de Pulpe de Chicoutimi and the disposal of the Ha! Ha! Bay Sulfite Company on June 30, 1922. It was succeeded by the Bay Sulfites Company Limited, which was also disposed in 1923.
On July 26, 1924, the Port-Alfred Pulp and Paper Corporation acquired the plant and began converting its production from chemical to paper pulp in 1925.
Alcan purchased Port-Alfred's port and rail facilities in 1926 after the disposal of the Compagnie de Pulpe de Chicoutimi. The docks were converted so they could load
bauxite
Bauxite is a sedimentary rock with a relatively high aluminium content. It is the world's main source of aluminium and gallium. Bauxite consists mostly of the aluminium minerals gibbsite (Al(OH)3), boehmite (γ-AlO(OH)) and diaspore (α-AlO(O ...
for the new
aluminum smelter
Aluminium (aluminum in AmE, American and CanE, Canadian English) is a chemical element with the Symbol (chemistry), symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately o ...
in
Arvida.
The community continued to grow despite the economic difficulties of the Canadian
pulp and paper industry
The pulp and paper industry comprises companies that use wood as raw material and produce pulp, paper, paperboard and other cellulose-based products.
Manufacturing process
The pulp is fed to a paper machine where it is formed as a paper web an ...
in 1928.
Canada Power and Paper Corporation acquired the Port-Alfred mill and suspended its activities on October 31, 1930.
In 1927, the increasing population led to the opening of new schools in Port-Alfred such as the Bagotville Boys' Academy (French: ''Académie des garçons de Bagotville'') and the Saint-Édouard College (French: ''Collège Saint-Édouard'').
The newly created Consolidated Paper Corporation bought the Port-Alfred paper mill on August 28, 1930, and reopened it on June 8, 1932.
The mill was closed again from 1933 to 1934, which was followed by seventy years of stability. Another
forest industry company, the Scieries Saguenay, opened a plant in Bagotville in 1935.
The
Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
led to the construction of public works like the Port-Alfred and Bagotville Town Halls.
Many bay area residents turned to agriculture during this period of economic uncertainty.
Credit unions
A credit union, a type of financial institution similar to a commercial bank, is a member-owned nonprofit financial cooperative. Credit unions generally provide services to members similar to retail banks, including deposit accounts, provision ...
were established in Grande-Baie in 1927, Port-Alfred in 1933, and Bagotville in 1936.
In addition to the maritime traffic in Alcan's Port-Alfred port facilities, Bagotville's quay became
Canada Steamship Lines' water terminal in the
Saguenay region from 1930 to 1938.
During the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, the
Canadian government and the
Allies
An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
trained pilots and built several bases including one in Bagotville in 1942. The base was responsible for training pilots and protecting the Arvida aluminum smelter and the regions' dams until October 1944. The base was shut down in 1945.
In 1945,
Bagotville's civilian airport was run by
Canadian Pacific Air Lines
Canadian Pacific Air Lines was a Canadian airline that operated from 1942 to 1987. It operated under the name CP Air from 1968 to 1986. Headquartered at Vancouver International Airport in Richmond, British Columbia, it served domestic Canadian a ...
.
From 1946 onward, new services such as
public transportation linked Ha! Ha! Bay communities from the Bagotville terminal. The Voice of La Baie (French: ''La Voix de la Baie'') newspaper began publication in 1948.
The uneven expansion and development of the bay's three urban centres and two rural sectors led to the first municipal mergers in 1953. The Village of Grande-Baie was absorbed by Port-Alfred.
That same year, the new Saint-Marc-de-Bagotville Parish was established in Bagotville. Nearly a decade later, Notre-Dame-de-La-Baie Parish was founded in Port-Alfred in 1967.
The Ha! Ha! Bay Hospital (French: ''Hôpital de la baie des Ha! Ha!'') opened its doors in 1970.
The
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
led to the reopening of the Bagotville military base in July 1951. Four chase squadrons were stationed there, including the 413th
[413 Transport and Rescue Squadron (TRS)](_blank)
Department of National Defense, 2008. Consulted 2012-01-24. and
414
__NOTOC__
Year 414 ( CDXIV) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Constantius and Constans (or, less frequently, year 1167 ...
th
[414 Electronic Warfare Squadron (EWS)](_blank)
Department of National Defense, 2011. Consulted 2012-01-24. until 1953, the
440
Year 440 (CDXL) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Valentinianus and Anatolius (or, less frequently, year 1193 ''Ab urbe ...
th
[440 "Vampire" Transport Squadron](_blank)
Department of National Defense 2011. Consulted 2012-01-24. until 1957, and the
432
__NOTOC__
Year 432 ( CDXXXII) was a leap year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Aetius and Valerius (or, less frequently, year 1185 '' Ab ...
nd until 1961. Their mission was to intercept any intrusion in the Canadian northeast. In 1962, the
425th squadron was stationed in Bagotville with
CF-101 Voodoo interceptors. It was responsible for protecting the 22nd NORAD.
In 1958,
Air Canada and
Québec Air began scheduling flights from
Bagotville Airport.
Municipal mergers in the Ha! Ha! Bay became an increasingly pressing issue and was the most important intermunicipal political debate of the 1960s.
Bagotville and Port-Alfred's mayors, Hervé Tremblay and Laurier Simard, strongly opposed each other on the issue.
It was ultimately the
Quebec government that forced the merger in 1974 with the Act Concerning Certain Outaouais and Upper Saguenay Municipalities (French: ''Loi concernant certaines municipalités de l'Outaouais et du Haut-Saguenay''). The letters patent were issued December 10, 1975, for the merger on January 1, 1976.
Town of La Baie (1976–2001)
The Town of La Baie was founded on January 1, 1976. It was the result of the merger of the Towns of Bagotville and Port-Alfred and the
Parish Municipalities of Grande-Baie and Bagotville. Since the first municipal elections were only scheduled for November 1977, a temporary municipal council was appointed. The leaders of the merged municipalities sat on an administrative council; city hall alternated between the mayors of Bagotville and Port-Alfred.
After the 1977 elections, Laurier Simard, the former mayor of Port-Alfred, became the Town of La Baie's first mayor.
The Grande-Baie aluminum smelter was built between 1977 and 1982.
Alcan spent nearly a billion dollars building the plant that opened on September 15, 1981.
The
Saguenay Fjord National Park
Saguenay Fjord National Park (french: parc national du Fjord-du-Saguenay) is a provincial park located in Quebec, Canada. In the regions of Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, Charlevoix, Côte-Nord, and Bas-Saint-Laurent, the park is situated along the ...
was created in 1983 to open the
Saguenay Fjord
Saguenay Fjord National Park (french: parc national du Fjord-du-Saguenay) is a provincial park located in Quebec, Canada. In the regions of Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, Charlevoix, Côte-Nord, and Bas-Saint-Laurent, the park is situated along the ...
to tourists.
That same year, the relocation of the Port of Chicoutimi to Grande-Anse began, moving the port from
Ha! Ha! Bay to the
Saguenay River. The Grande-Anse Maritime Terminal was inaugurated in October 1986.
The
Bagotville military base put its first
CF-18s in operation in December 1984.
These planes replaced the CF-101 Voodoos that had been used since the 1960s.
For La Baie's celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the first colony in
Grande-Baie, the ''Théâtre du Palais municipal'' presented the first season of the historical extravaganza called The Amazing History of a Kingdom (French: ''La Fabuleuse Histoire d'un royaume''). On November 25 of that same year,
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 ...
was hit by the
Saguenay earthquake, measuring 6.25 on the
Richter magnitude scale
The Richter scale —also called the Richter magnitude scale, Richter's magnitude scale, and the Gutenberg–Richter scale—is a measure of the strength of earthquakes, developed by Charles Francis Richter and presented in his landmark 1935 ...
.
[Tremblement de terre au Québec](_blank)
Université de Sherbrooke. Consulted 2012-01-24.
Saguenay Flood
From July 18 to 21, 1996, a major
depression resulted in 260 mm of rain falling within a fifty-hour period on the
Laurentian Wildlife Reserve Laurentian (French: ''Laurentides'' or ''Laurentien'') may refer to:
*Relation to Saint Lawrence Geography
North America
*Laurentide Ice Sheet, the continental glacier covering much of North America during the Pleistocene Epoch
*Relating to the Sai ...
and the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region. The soil, which was already oversaturated after a particularly rainy month, could not absorb the excess water from the
Saguenay River's drainage basins. The heavy rainfall rapidly increased the discharge from the Ha! Ha! Bay's tributaries' river basins and other Saguenay waterways. The first signs of disaster appeared on the night of July 18 to 19. Land erosion caused a house in Grande-Baie to be ripped apart and sewers located near the banks of the Ha! Ha! River began to back up. The Ha! Ha! and Mars Rivers' discharges quickly became dangerous and blocked access to the bridges that crossed them. The situation was at its lowest point when a dam on
Ha! Ha! Lake ruptured and washed away central Grande-Baie.
La Baie, and especially the Grande-Baie sector, was the town that was the most heavily hit by the Saguenay Flood. Fifty million dollars were required to rebuild public infrastructure and an additional thirty million were needed to stabilize the Ha! Ha! and Mars riverbanks. The railways were heavily damaged, which paralyzed the city's economy, cut off drinking water supplies, and isolated areas east of the Mars River. Transportation to lower Saguenay was impossible, leaving sectors of Port-Alfred and Grande-Baie completely isolated.
[The Impacts in the District of La Baie](_blank)
Musée du Fjord. Consulted 2012-01-24.
Reconstruction of the Grande-Baie sector and the development of the commemorative Ha! Ha! Park began in 1997. The
Ha! Ha! Pyramid
The Ha! Ha! Pyramid (french: links=yes, Pyramide des Ha! Ha!) is a contemporary art monument commemorating the Saguenay flood of 1996. Located in the district of La Baie in Saguenay, Quebec, the pyramid was named after the nearby Ha! Ha! Riv ...
was built in 1998 and officially inaugurated in 2000.
[''Les Arts et la ville'' Contest Presentation - Ha! Ha! Pyramid](_blank)
City of Saguenay. Consulted 2012-01-24.
Uniboard built the Panneaux MDF La Baie Inc. plant in 1997, which made medium-density fibreboard out of wood residue.
Logging and Sawmilling Journal 2002. Consulted 2012-01-24. In 2001, rumours about the
Abitibi-Consolidated mill in Port-Alfred shutting down began to surface after eighty-nine people were laid off.
[Roger Deslauriers. ''La Baie, usine de Port-Alfred, La ténacité des travailleurs devant Abitibi-Consolidated'']
Monde forestier Le Monde Forestier
March 2004. Consulted 2008-12-16.
As 2002 approached, the Town of La Baie began opposing the Quebec government's plan for
municipal mergers after the Department of Municipal Affairs published a white paper called Municipal Reorganization: Changing the Way We Do Things to Better Serve Citizens (French: ''La Réorganisation municipale: changer les façons de faire pour mieux server les citoyens'') on April 25, 2000. Some of La Baie's elected officials expressed opposition to the imminent municipal mergers in the Saguenay region by joining
Laterrière in refusing to sit on transition committees.
[Denis Bouchard. "Toujours la politique de la chaise vide à La Baie." ''Le Quotidien'', August 4, 2001.] Despite this, the mergers were officialized and the November 25, 2001, municipal elections for borough representatives were held for the new
city of Saguenay.
City of Saguenay and the La Baie Borough
La Baie was merged into the City of Saguenay on January 1, 2002.
Despite everything that was proposed and done to keep the
Abitibi-Consolidated mill open in Port-Alfred, it was temporarily shut down on December 10, 2003, as part of a major restructuring plan. It was officially closed on January 26, 2004;
[L'expérience de l'usine Port-Alfred](_blank)
Radio-Canada
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (french: Société Radio-Canada), branded as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian public broadcaster for both radio and television. It is a federal Crown corporation that receives funding from the government. ...
. 12 February 2008. Consulted 2012-01-24. 640 jobs were lost.
[Alain Castonguay, "Des fermetures d'usines au Témiscamingue - Encore plus de chômeurs au Saguenay.]
Le Monde Forestier
February 2004. Consulted 2008-12-16. Having learnt from its difficult and costly experience while trying to save the
Gaspésia paper mill, the
Quebec government withdrew from plans to reopen the plant in 2005.
[Québec ne veut pas faire de Port-Alfred une autre Gaspésia](_blank)
Radio-Canada. 7 November 2005. Consulted 2012-01-24. The mill was demolished in 2006.
Two years after the mergers, the Quebec government allowed merged municipalities to hold public consultations starting on May 16, 2004, to organize demerger
referendums
A referendum (plural: referendums or less commonly referenda) is a direct vote by the electorate on a proposal, law, or political issue. This is in contrast to an issue being voted on by a representative. This may result in the adoption of a ...
to be held on June 20, 2004.
[Défusions : ouverture des registres](_blank)
Radio-Canada. 16 May 2004. Consulted 2012-01-24. Although La Baie was the centre of demerger support in Saguenay at the time, demerger support was not widespread enough to affect the borough's status. By the May 21, 2004, deadline, only fifty of the required 1,502 signatures were missing to hold a referendum.
[Saguenay pourra aller de l'avant](_blank)
Radio-Canada. 16 May 2004. Consulted 2012-01-24.
Since its creation in 2002, the City of Saguenay, Promotion Saguenay, and the Quebec government have worked together to increase tourism in the La Baie Borough by building port facilities for
cruise ships
Cruise ships are large passenger ships used mainly for vacationing. Unlike ocean liners, which are used for transport, cruise ships typically embark on round-trip voyages to various ports-of-call, where passengers may go on tours known as "s ...
. Originally, these groups had planned to develop Port-Alfred's Powell Quay and the Grande-Anse Maritime Terminal and set up a shuttle service. However, it was eventually Bagotville's Algélias-Lepage Quay that was selected for the installation of cruise ship facilities because of the shorter disembarkation distance and increased safety for the boat passengers.
[Promotion Saguenay]
Aménagement d'un port d'escale au quai A.-Lepage - Étude d'impact sur l'environnement
. March 2006. Consulted 2012-01-24. After the Office of Public Hearings on the Environment (French: ''Bureau d'audiences publiques sur l'environnement'') held consultations, work began in August 2007
[La firme EBC est choisie](_blank)
Radio-Canada. 17 August 2007. Consulted 2012-01-24. despite a small opposition movement to the project in 2006.
[Le projet pourra aller de l'avant](_blank)
Radio-Canada. 22 December 2006. Consulted 2012-01-24. The quay welcomed its first ships in September 2008.
[Un premier bateau à La Baie](_blank)
Radio-Canada. 9 September 2008. Consulted 2012-01-24.
Geography
Territory
La Baie is located in the eastern part of the
city of Saguenay. It lies between upper and lower Saguenay and surrounds
Ha! Ha! Bay. The borough borders the
Saguenay River to the north,
Saint-Félix-d'Otis to the east,
Ferland-et-Boilleau to the southeast, La Zec Mars-Moulin to the south, the
Laterrière sector to the southwest, and the
Chicoutimi Borough to the west.
La Baie is or 23% of Saguenay's total area. The urbanized zone is located on the mouths of the Ha! Ha! and Mars Rivers. Urbanized areas cover only a small part of the bay area and the neighbouring plateaus.
Like the
Saguenay Fjord
Saguenay Fjord National Park (french: parc national du Fjord-du-Saguenay) is a provincial park located in Quebec, Canada. In the regions of Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, Charlevoix, Côte-Nord, and Bas-Saint-Laurent, the park is situated along the ...
's steep relief, altitude rises sharply from the bay's shores, particularly on the northwest banks. Overlooking the bay, the Centennial Cross (French: ''Croix du centenaire'') is from the shore and is located on the des Écorceurs Cove at an altitude of . On the other side of the bay is
Mount Bélu, which has an altitude of . The town's outskirts stretch along a
fluvial terrace
Fluvial terraces are elongated terraces that flank the sides of floodplains and fluvial valleys all over the world. They consist of a relatively level strip of land, called a "tread", separated from either an adjacent floodplain, other fluvial te ...
down the Ha! Ha! and Mars Rivers toward
Chicoutimi and
Laterrière and go all the way to the
Laurentians. The
plateaus to the east and southeast are flat enough for both agriculture and large infrastructure such as the
Bagotville Airport and the Grande-Baie aluminum smelter.
The borough's soil is clayey like much of the Saguenay region because of river-ice deposits in the ravines that face the bay. There are seventy-one scars from old
landslides
Landslides, also known as landslips, are several forms of mass wasting that may include a wide range of ground movements, such as rockfalls, deep-seated slope failures, mudflows, and debris flows. Landslides occur in a variety of environments, ...
in the La Baie Borough's urban core.
[La Baie Landslides](_blank)
Applied Sciences department, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi
The Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (UQAC) is a branch of the Université du Québec network founded in 1969 and based in the Chicoutimi borough of Saguenay, Quebec, Canada. UQAC has secondary study centres in La Malbaie, Saint-Félicien ...
. 1999. Consulted 2012-01-24.
Climate
Like most cities alongside the
Saguenay River and east of
St-Jean Lake, La Baie has a
continental climate
Continental climates often have a significant annual variation in temperature (warm summers and cold winters). They tend to occur in the middle latitudes (40 to 55 north), within large landmasses where prevailing winds blow overland bringing som ...
that is milder than the surrounding
Laurentian Plateau. La Baie has an average annual temperature of with temperatures varying between .
[Étienne Troestler]
Le climat au Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean
. ''Enclyclobec''. 13 November 2002. Consulted 2012-01-24. Even though it is located on the same latitude as warmer European cities such as
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
or
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
, La Baie has long, cold winters and short, mild summers.
The borough receives an average of of rain and of snow annually. July is the rainiest month while February is the driest. Skies are overcast 60 to 65% of the time; the borough has an average of 1,720 hours of sunshine per year.
During the winter, the average thickness of the ice on Ha! Ha! Bay is . Icebreakers keep the Saguenay River open for ships until Port-Alfred, where tides can reach up to .
Demographics
The La Baie Borough is the fourth largest urban centre in
Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean (after
Chicoutimi,
Jonquière, and
Alma
Alma or ALMA may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* ''Alma'' (film), a 2009 Spanish short animated film
* ''Alma'' (Oswald de Andrade novel), 1922
* ''Alma'' (Le Clézio novel), 2017
* ''Alma'' (play), a 1996 drama by Joshua Sobol about Alma ...
) with 7% of the region's total population. Over half of the region's population lived there before 1860. Upper Saguenay and
Saint-Jean Lake were settled later and experienced much faster rates of population growth. The population of La Baie was soon surpassed by
Chicoutimi, which eventually became the region's capital.
The La Baie Borough lost 6.5% of its population between 1991 and 2006.
[Portrait socio-économique de Saguenay]
CLD de la Ville de Saguenay et Promotion Saguenay, 2007. Consulted 2009-02-06 It experienced the largest demographic decline of the
city of Saguenay; the entire city lost 4.4% of its population during the same period. Even though the
Abitibi-Consolidated mill closed in 2003, the population decline has slowed since 2001. The population decreased by 5.3% from 1996 to 2001 and by 1.5% from 2001 to 2006.
La Baie also contains the city's youngest families.
It is the most sparsely populated Saguenay borough with 75 inhabitants per km
2.
[Statistics Canada 2006 Census](_blank)
Combination of th
40800160.00
40800161.00
40800162.00
an
40800163.00
Census tracts of the 2006 Census, or the territories of the former Town of La Baie and the La Baie Borough of the City of Saguenay According to the 2006 census, it had 19,639 inhabitants,
7,755 households,
and 5,635 families.
The most densely populated sector is Port-Alfred with 117.4 inhabitants per km
2.
Census trac
40800162.00
the Port-Alfred sector of the city of Saguenay
According to
Statistics Canada
Statistics Canada (StatCan; french: Statistique Canada), formed in 1971, is the agency of the Government of Canada commissioned with producing statistics to help better understand Canada, its population, resources, economy, society, and cultur ...
, 97.4% of the population is
francophone
French became an international language in the Middle Ages, when the power of the Kingdom of France made it the second international language, alongside Latin. This status continued to grow into the 18th century, by which time French was the l ...
and 0.7% of the population is
anglophone.
Immigrants make up less than 1% of the population.
In 2006, 9.9% of the population over the age of fifteen had a university diploma (
bachelor's or
higher
Higher may refer to:
Music
* The Higher, a 2002–2012 American pop rock band
Albums
* ''Higher'' (Ala Boratyn album) or the title song, 2007
* ''Higher'' (Ezio album) or the title song, 2000
* ''Higher'' (Harem Scarem album) or the title song ...
), 38.8% had a
CEGEP diploma, and 18.8% had a
high school
A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...
diploma. In 2001, 32.4% of the population over the age of fifteen had not completed high school, which is the highest percentage of all three of Saguenay's boroughs.
The average per capita income is $24,107. The average household income is $50,119.
The sector with the highest per capita income is Grande-Baie at $28,319,
[Statistics Canada 2006 Census](_blank)
Census trac
40800163.00
which corresponds to the Grande-Baie sector of Saguenay and the sector with the lowest is Port-Alfred at $21,462.
"
, + Sociodemographic profile in 2006
, -
! Indicator:, , La Baie, , Saguenay (city), , Quebec
, -
, Men (%), , align=center, 49.6, , align=center, 48.7, , align=center, 48.9
, -
, Women (%), , align=center, 50.4, , align=center, 51.3, , align=center, 50.1
, -
, Median age, , align=center, 42.7, , align=center, 43.5 , , align=center, 41.0
, -
, Population less than 15 years old (%), , align=center, 15.9, , align=center, 15.2, , align=center, 16.6
, -
, Population 16 to 64 years (%), , align=center, 69.9, , align=center, 69.4, , align=center, 69.1
, -
, Population 65 years and over (%), , align=center, 14.2, , align=center, 15.4, , align=center, 14.3
, -
, Income per capita (CAD$), , align=center, 24,107, , align=center, 23,288, , align=center, 24,430
, -
, Poverty rate (%), , align=center, 10.5, , align=center, 14.5, , align=center, 17.2
Borough
The La Baie Borough, which was created on February 18, 2002, accounts for 3 of 19 electoral districts and 13.3% of the city's voters.
[Ministère des affaires municipales et des régions du Québec]
Décret pour la constitution de ville de Saguenay
2000. Consulted 2012-01-24. It is governed by a
borough council that elects a president who also serves as one of three municipal councillors. The borough's director and
clerk of court hold the other two municipal council seats. Council meetings are held once a month and are open to the public. They are held at the La Baie Borough Office in the Bagotville sector, which once housed La Baie's town hall.
[City of Saguenay - Municipal and Borough Councils](_blank)
Consulted 2012-01-24.
The La Baie Borough Council oversees
urban planning
Urban planning, also known as town planning, city planning, regional planning, or rural planning, is a technical and political process that is focused on the development and design of land use and the built environment, including air, water, ...
,
traffic flows,
snow removal
Snow removal or snow clearing is the job of removing snow after a snowfall to make travel easier and safer. This is done by both individual households and by governments and institutions.
De-icing and anti-icing
De-icing is defined as removal ...
, the
road system,
firefighting
Firefighting is the act of extinguishing or preventing the spread of unwanted fires from threatening human lives and destroying property and the environment. A person who engages in firefighting is known as a firefighter.
Firefighters typically ...
,
socioeconomic
Socioeconomics (also known as social economics) is the social science that studies how economic activity affects and is shaped by social processes. In general it analyzes how modern societies progress, stagnate, or regress because of their local ...
,
community
A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place, norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, tow ...
, and
cultural development,
parks
A park is an area of natural, semi-natural or planted space set aside for human enjoyment and recreation or for the protection of wildlife or natural habitats. Urban parks are urban green space, green spaces set aside for recreation inside t ...
, and
recreation
Recreation is an activity of leisure, leisure being discretionary time. The "need to do something for recreation" is an essential element of human biology and psychology. Recreational activities are often done for enjoyment, amusement, or pleasur ...
around the Ha! Ha! Bay.
Administrative history
Administrative history of Ha! Ha! Bay communities from colonization until today
Mayors of La Baie since 1855
Residential districts and urban planning
According to
Statistics Canada
Statistics Canada (StatCan; french: Statistique Canada), formed in 1971, is the agency of the Government of Canada commissioned with producing statistics to help better understand Canada, its population, resources, economy, society, and cultur ...
, in 2006 the La Baie Borough contained 8,112 dwellings, 7,763 or 95.7% of which were principal residences while 4.3% were second residences. The percentage of dwellings built after 1986 was 22.7% or 1,840 new dwellings, which is slightly above the Saguenay average of 22.1%. Among inhabited dwellings, 6.8% need major repairs, which is 0.1% higher than the city mean. The average value of the borough's dwellings is $103,131, which is lower than the city average of $116,559.
Most residences (45.8%) were single-family dwellings. Semidetached houses represented 6.8% of residences, while 2.9% were row houses and 18.2% were duplexes. Apartment buildings with less than five stories accounted for 23.2% and those with more than five stories were 0.2%. Rental units constituted 37% of dwellings (2,870) and owned dwellings made up 63% (4,890).
Politics
The
federal riding of
Chicoutimi—Le Fjord
Chicoutimi—Le Fjord (formerly known as Chicoutimi) is a federal electoral district in Quebec, Canada, that has been represented in the House of Commons of Canada since 1925. The riding consists of the northern part of the Chicoutimi borough o ...
represents the borough's 15,051 voters.
[Ville de Saguenay - Vie politique municipale - Les districts électoraux - La Baie](_blank)
City of Saguenay. 2007. Retrieved 2009-02-07. La Baie, which contains 20% of the riding's voters, has lost political clout to the more populous
Chicoutimi Borough that shares the same Member of Parliament.
[Electoral District Profile - Chicoutimi-Le Fjord](_blank)
Elections Canada. Retrieved 2013-01-28.
Chicoutimi—Le Fjord's current
MP is
Richard Martel
Richard Martel (born March 23, 1961) is a Canadian politician and former ice hockey coach. He last coached the Grenoble Brûleurs de Loups in the French Ligue Magnus. Martel was elected to the House of Commons of Canada in a by-election on ...
of the
Conservative Party
The Conservative Party is a name used by many political parties around the world. These political parties are generally right-wing though their exact ideologies can range from center-right to far-right.
Political parties called The Conservative P ...
.
At the provincial level, the La Baie Borough represents 41% of voters in the
Dubuc riding.
[General information on the provincial electoral divisions - Dubuc](_blank)
Le directeur général des élections du Québec. 2013. Retrieved 2013-01-28.
The riding has been represented by the
Quebec Liberal Party
The Quebec Liberal Party (QLP; french: Parti libéral du Québec, PLQ) is a provincial political party in Quebec. It has been independent of the federal Liberal Party of Canada since 1955. The QLP has always been associated with the colour red; e ...
MNA Serge Simard since 2014.
Economics
style="float:right; text-align:right; margin:0.2em 0 0.2em 1em; width:30em; border:1px #aaa solid;"
, + Employment in the borough of La Baie (2006)
, - style="background:#A8CCA4;color:#000080;font-size:105%;"
, align=center, ''Sectors of activity'' , , colspan=2 align=center, ''Number of jobs
in 2006'', , Quebec
, -
, align=left ,
Agriculture and raw materials , , 305, , align=center , 3 %, , align=center , 4 %
, -
, align=left ,
Construction
Construction is a general term meaning the art and science to form objects, systems, or organizations,"Construction" def. 1.a. 1.b. and 1.c. ''Oxford English Dictionary'' Second Edition on CD-ROM (v. 4.0) Oxford University Press 2009 and com ...
, , 565 , , align=center , 6 %, , align=center , 5 %
, -
, align=left ,
Manufacturing
Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to a r ...
, , 1,370, , align=center , 15 %, , align=center , 15 %
, -
, align=left ,
Wholesale trade , , 270, , align=center , 3 %, , align=center , 4 %
, -
, align=left ,
Retail
Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesaler, and t ...
, , 1,150, , align=center , 13 %, , align=center , 12 %
, -
, align=left ,
Finance
Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of fina ...
and
real estate
Real estate is property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this (also) an item of real property, (more general ...
, , 195, , align=center , 2 %, , align=center , 5 %
, -
, align=left ,
Health
Health, according to the World Health Organization, is "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity".World Health Organization. (2006)''Constitution of the World Health Organiza ...
and
social services
Social services are a range of public services intended to provide support and assistance towards particular groups, which commonly include the disadvantaged. They may be provided by individuals, private and independent organisations, or administe ...
, , 1,125, , align=center , 12 %, , align=center , 11 %
, -
, align=left ,
Education
Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. Va ...
, , 580, , align=center , 6 %, , align=center , 7 %
, -
, align=left ,
Customer service
Customer service is the assistance and advice provided by a company to those people who buy or use its products or services. Each industry requires different levels of customer service, but in the end, the idea of a well-performed service is that ...
, , 1,015, , align=center , 11 %, , align=center , 17 %
, -
, align=left ,
Other services , , 2,510, , align=center , 29 %, , align=center , 20 %
, - bgcolor=#A8CCA4
, align=center , Total , , 9,085, ,
La Baie's economy used to depend on
logging
Logging is the process of cutting, processing, and moving trees to a location for transport. It may include skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or logs onto trucks or skeleton cars.
Logging is the beginning of a supply chain ...
and
wood processing, which contributed the area's expansion during the twentieth century. Since the closure of Port-Alfred's
Abitibi-Consolidated mill in 2004, the borough's main economic drivers have been the
Rio Tinto Alcan aluminum smelter in Grande-Baie (684 employees) and the
Bagotville military base (1,200 soldiers and 250 civilians).
[Villes en péril](_blank)
Jobboom. March 2006. Retrieved 2012-01-28. Overall, there are sixty-one businesses in thirty-four fields of activity. According to
Statistics Canada
Statistics Canada (StatCan; french: Statistique Canada), formed in 1971, is the agency of the Government of Canada commissioned with producing statistics to help better understand Canada, its population, resources, economy, society, and cultur ...
, 56% or 9,085 of the borough's residents were part of the labour force in 2006. The 2006
unemployment rate was 8.5%. Workers from outside the borough come mainly from
Chicoutimi,
Jonquière, and the lower Saguenay region. More the half of the labour force of
Saint-Félix-d'Otis and
Ferland-et-Boilleau work in La Baie.
[Atlas Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean](_blank)
Université du Québec à Chicoutimi. 2012. Retrieved 2013-01-28.
Primary and secondary sectors
= Agriculture and the dairy industry
=
Despite the harsh terrain around Ha! Ha! Bay, the plateaus that extend toward
Laterrière and
Chicoutimi and overhang Grande-Baie are fertile enough to produce small quantities of
cereals
A cereal is any grass cultivated for the edible components of its grain (botanically, a type of fruit called a caryopsis), composed of the endosperm, germ, and bran. Cereal grain crops are grown in greater quantities and provide more food en ...
and oleaginous plants.
Truck farming is practised in fields and in
greenhouses
A greenhouse (also called a glasshouse, or, if with sufficient heating, a hothouse) is a structure with walls and roof made chiefly of transparent material, such as glass, in which plants requiring regulated climatic conditions are grown.These s ...
. La Baie also contains a
tree nursery
A nursery is a place where plants are plant propagation, propagated and grown to a desired size. Mostly the plants concerned are for gardening, forestry or conservation biology, rather than agriculture. They include retail nurseries, which sel ...
and a greenhouse for grass farming.
Fodder crop production is important for supporting the borough's dairy industry.
Deer
Deer or true deer are hoofed ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. The two main groups of deer are the Cervinae, including the muntjac, the elk (wapiti), the red deer, and the fallow deer; and the Capreolinae, including the reindeer ...
[Domaine du cervidé](_blank)
2008. Retrieved 2013-01-28. and
cattle
Cattle (''Bos taurus'') are large, domesticated, cloven-hooved, herbivores. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae and the most widespread species of the genus ''Bos''. Adult females are referred to as cows and adult mal ...
farming are also practised.
''L'écohameau de La Baie'' was founded in 1990 by the ''Groupe de recherches écologiques de la Batture'' (GREB). It includes an
organic farm
Organic farming, also known as ecological farming or biological farming,Labelling, article 30 o''Regulation (EU) 2018/848 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 May 2018 on organic production and labelling of organic products and re ...
(''Vallons de Chambreule'') and six single-family ecological homes.
[L'écohameau de La Baie](_blank)
Groupe de recherches écologiques de La Baie. Retrieved 2013-01-28. For a long time, it was the only certified organic farm in Saguenay. In 2000, it was the first farm in
Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean to offer
Community-supported agriculture (community-supported agriculture) baskets.
[Les Vallons de chambreule](_blank)
Groupe de recherches écologiques de La Baie. Retrieved 2013-01-28.
Milk production
A dairy is a business enterprise established for the harvesting or processing (or both) of animal milk – mostly from cows or buffaloes, but also from goats, sheep, horses, or camels – for human consumption. A dairy is typically located on ...
is still the main agricultural activity. The borough contains twenty-one
dairy farms
A dairy is a business enterprise established for the harvesting or processing (or both) of animal milk – mostly from cows or buffaloes, but also from goats, sheep, horses, or camels – for human consumption. A dairy is typically located on ...
that are members of the
Fédération des producteurs de lait du Québec. There are two major milk processing companies in the borough: ''La Laiterie de La Baie'', which employs seventy people and accounts for 25% of the region's dairy market and the ''Fromagerie Boivin'' which uses between 12 and 17 million litres of milk a year to manufacture
Cheddar cheese
Cheddar cheese (or simply cheddar) is a natural cheese that is relatively hard, off-white (or orange if colourings such as annatto are added), and sometimes sharp-tasting. Cheddar originates from the English village of Cheddar in Somerset.
Ched ...
. ''Les bergeries du Fjord'' make a
sheep
Sheep or domestic sheep (''Ovis aries'') are domesticated, ruminant mammals typically kept as livestock. Although the term ''sheep'' can apply to other species in the genus ''Ovis'', in everyday usage it almost always refers to domesticated s ...
's milk cheese.
= Logging
=
The
logging
Logging is the process of cutting, processing, and moving trees to a location for transport. It may include skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or logs onto trucks or skeleton cars.
Logging is the beginning of a supply chain ...
and wood substance processing industries generated 1,172 jobs in 2002. The 2004 closure of the
Abitibi-Consolidated paper mill led to the direct or indirect loss of 780 jobs, totalling 30 million dollars in lost wages.
[Examen conjoint du projet Eastman 1-A et la dérivation Rupert](_blank)
Promotion Saguenay and CLD de la Ville de Saguenay. May 2006. Retrieved 2013-01-28. The MDF La Baie plant, which was founded in 1996 and employs 120 people, had to cut eighty jobs in 2007 and 2008 because of the decreased demand for
MDF panels.
Outside of large industry, La Baie's logging sector includes small- and medium-sized businesses involved in
forest management and
wood
Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin th ...
transportation. Some local sawmills include the ''Scierie Armand Tremblay & Fils'' and the ''Scierie Gauthier'', which is the oldest business in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region.
[Scierie Gauthier](_blank)
Retrieved 2013-01-28. After the Abitibi-Consolidated-owned ''Scierie Saguenay'' closed in 2005, it transferred most of its fifty employees to the Saint-Fulgence sawmill.
[Alain Castonguay]
Scierie Saguenay, à La Baie, ferme ses portes
December 2005. Retrieved 2013-01-28. Several small businesses manufacture wood into end items such as kitchen cabinetry, furniture, roof framing, and flooring.
= Quarries, non-ferrous materials, and chemicals
=
Although La Baie does not have any
mines,
granitic rock
A granitoid is a generic term for a diverse category of coarse-grained igneous rocks that consist predominantly of quartz, plagioclase, and alkali feldspar. Granitoids range from plagioclase-rich tonalites to alkali-rich syenites and from quartz- ...
is extracted in Grenville Province, particularly Laurentian
granite
Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergro ...
and
gneiss
Gneiss ( ) is a common and widely distributed type of metamorphic rock. It is formed by high-temperature and high-pressure metamorphic processes acting on formations composed of igneous or sedimentary rocks. Gneiss forms at higher temperatures an ...
. These
quarries contain
polychrome
Polychrome is the "practice of decorating architectural elements, sculpture, etc., in a variety of colors." The term is used to refer to certain styles of architecture, pottery or sculpture in multiple colors.
Ancient Egypt
Colossal statu ...
,
[Polychrome](_blank)
Ministère des ressources naturelles. 2012. Retrieved 2013-01-29. an
architectural stone used in the
World Financial Centre in
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
, the
Canadian Museum of Civilization in
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada and the
Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Centre in
Washington
Washington commonly refers to:
* Washington (state), United States
* Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States
** A metonym for the federal government of the United States
** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered on ...
's
Federal Triangle
The Federal Triangle is a triangular area in Washington, D.C. formed by 15th Street NW, Constitution Avenue NW, Pennsylvania Avenue NW, and E Street NW. Federal Triangle is occupied by 10 large city and federal office buildings, all of which are ...
.
[Polychrome M - Granite](_blank)
2010. Retrieved 2013-01-29. The borough's other quarries specialize in crushed, building, and landscaping stone.
Other minor industrial activities include
glass
Glass is a non-crystalline, often transparent, amorphous solid that has widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in, for example, window panes, tableware, and optics. Glass is most often formed by rapid cooling (quenching) of ...
-cutting, the production of plastic and chemical derivatives (such as cleaners and industrial degreasers),
PVC window frames, and
asphalt
Asphalt, also known as bitumen (, ), is a sticky, black, highly viscous liquid or semi-solid form of petroleum. It may be found in natural deposits or may be a refined product, and is classed as a pitch. Before the 20th century, the term a ...
.
[Magella J. Gauthier, Carl Brisson, and Jean-François Fortin]
L'exportation au Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, Portrait des établissements manufacturiers exportateurs, 1994 à 2003
Université du Québec à Chicoutimi. 2004. Retrieved 2013-01-28.
= Metals
=
In 2002, aluminum production at the
Rio Tinto Alcan plant in Grande-Baie combined with
metal fabrication and
machining
Machining is a process in which a material (often metal) is cut to a desired final shape and size by a controlled material-removal process. The processes that have this common theme are collectively called subtractive manufacturing, which utilizes ...
generated 1,147 jobs in the borough. The Grande-Baie
aluminum smelter
Aluminium (aluminum in AmE, American and CanE, Canadian English) is a chemical element with the Symbol (chemistry), symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately o ...
, which opened its doors in 1980, employs 684 people and produces 196,000 tonnes of
aluminum
Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. It has ...
annually.
[Société d'électrolyse et de chimie Alcan ltée, usine de Grande-Baie](_blank)
2006. Environment Canada. Retrieved 2013-01-28. Nearly 40% of the plant's employees live in the borough.
[Frédéric Munger. Étude sur la mobilité de la main d'œuvre au Saguenay : rapport d'analyse. UQAC, CLD Fjord-du-Saguenay, 42 pages.] Related industries such as aluminum fabrication, structural framing, and iron frame production
are also essential to La Baie's economy.
= Commerce
=
The borough's market potential is estimated at 220 million dollars.
Despite the presence of the ''Galeries de La Baie'' shopping centre, which employs 185 people, and Victoria Street, the borough's main commercial artery, La Baie has the smallest area of commercial influence. Along with
Dolbeau-Mistassini, La Baie's residents are the least likely in the region to shop in their own neighbourhood. Even though the borough is closer to the lower Saguenay area and is linked there by a direct road,
Chicoutimi is the region's most popular shopping destination.
= Institutions
=
The
Canadian Forces Base Bagotville
Canadian Forces Base Bagotville , commonly referred to as CFB Bagotville, and also known as Bagotville Airport or Saguenay-Bagotville Airport, is a Canadian Forces base located west of Bagotville in the city of Saguenay. Located in the centre ...
is the borough's main employer. It has 1,584 permanent and temporary employees, including the 837 military families of 3 Wing.
[Saguenay en chiffre]
CLD de la Ville de Saguenay and Promotion Saguenay, 2005. Retrieved 2008-12-24 It brings 100 million dollars to the area, including 65 million dollars in salaries and 11 million dollars of federal investment in La Baie and the
Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean region.
The airbase's control tower is managed by
Nav Canada, which also collects weather data.
Other federal institutions in the borough include a
Department of Public Works and Government Services
Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC; french: Services publics et Approvisionnement Canada)''Public Services and Procurement Canada'' is the applied title under the Federal Identity Program; the legal title is Department of Public Works ...
office inside the Bagotville base and a Human Resources and Skill Development office offering immigration and employment services. There is also a Community Futures Development Corporation office, an organization that focuses on
community economic development Community economic development (CED) is a field of study that actively elicits community involvement when working with government, and private sectors to build strong communities, industries, and markets. It includes collaborative and participatory ...
.
The borough's provincial institutions include a ''Centre local d'emplois'', a ''Carrefour jeunesse emploi'', and a
Société de l'assurance automobile du Québec
The Société de l'assurance automobile du Québec (SAAQ; Quebec Automobile Insurance Corporation) is a Crown corporation responsible for licensing drivers and vehicles in the province of Quebec and providing public auto insurance which insures a ...
branch. The
Dubuc MNA's riding office is also located in the borough.
Transportation
Automobile
A provincial highway and two interregional highways cross La Baie. The main road,
Highway 170, runs from Highway 70 (which junctions with
Highway 175) to
Chicoutimi and Port-Alfred.
[Réseau routier national - Liste des routes du RRN au 31 décembre 2006](_blank)
. Conseil des ministres responsables des transports et de la sécurité routière. 2006. Retrieved 2013-01-28. It becomes an interregional highway along Ha! Ha! Bay toward lower Saguenay. The other interregional highway, the ''Route du petit Parc'' (
Highway 381), begins at Port-Alfred and heads toward
Ferland-et-Boilleau. These interregional roads both connect the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region to
Charlevoix. The only intermunicipal highway is Saint-Jean-Baptiste Boulevard, which becomes Grande-Baie Nord Boulevard (
Highway 372) on the eastern edge of the borough. It connects
Rivière-du-Moulin in Chicoutimi to Bagotville.
Automobile traffic in the borough passes mostly on Highway 170. The stretch between
Bagotville Airport and Grande-Baie is used by 10,000 automobiles daily. Between Grande-Baie and lower Saguenay, it drops to 2,500 to 5,000 automobiles.
[Le transport des personnes](_blank)
Transport Québec. 2006. Retrieved 2013-01-29. The Petit Parc (Highway 381) in direction of Ferland-et-Boilleau is used by 1,000 to 2,500 vehicles per day and the ligne Bagot (Grande-Anse Road) between Bagotville Airport and the Grande-Anse Maritime Terminal is travelled by fewer than 1,000 vehicles a day.
In 2000, 5% of vehicles from outside the region came from the Laurentian Wildlife Reserve (Highway 175) and 30% from lower Saguenay using Highway 170.
Over 1,000 heavy vehicles drive between La Baie and Chicoutimi every day using only this road.
Fewer than 500 heavy vehicles a day come from lower Sagenay and Ferland-de-Boilleau.
Public transportation in the borough is provided by the City-owned
Société de transport du Saguenay
Société de transport du Saguenay (STS) is the public transport company in Saguenay, Quebec, Canada, formerly the ''Corporation intermunicipale de transport du Saguenay (CITS)''. They operate from three main terminals located in the boroughs of ...
(STS). Two bus lines link the Chicoutimi and La Baie terminals: the ''Via Saint-Jean-Baptiste'' line that uses Highway 372 and the ''Via Aéroport'' that goes by Highway 170.
[Horaires et circuits - Secteur La Baie](_blank)
Société de transport du Saguenay. 2012. Retrieved 2013-01-29. Three bus lines from the La Baie terminal serve the borough year-round and one during the winter. The ''Des Érables via Centre d'achats'' line travels to the Bagotville sector, the ''Polyvalente de La Baie via Avenue du Parc'' to Port-Alfred, and the ''Boulevard de la Grande-Baie Sud'' to Grande-Baie. The fourth bus line, ''Chemin Saint-Louis'', travels along Saint-Louis Road during the wintertime.
Cyclists can travel through La Baie using
Route Verte The ''Route Verte'' (in English, the "Green Route," or the "Greenway") is a network of bicycling and multiuse trails and designated roads, lanes, and surfaces, spanning as of October 31, 2013, in the Canadian province of Quebec, inaugurated on Augu ...
8. The bicycle path enters La Baie by De la Grande-Baie Nord Boulevard and reaches Laurier-Simard Quay, where it stretches six kilometres along Ha! Ha! Bay.
Maritime
The La Baie Borough has two deep-water ports:
* The port facilities in Port-Alfred at the end of Ha! Ha! Bay; and
* The Grande-Anse Maritime Terminal (Port of Saguenay) located outside of Ha! Ha! Bay on the
Saguenay River, on the north shore of Cap-à-l'ouest.
= Port-Alfred
=
style="float:right; text-align:right; margin:0.2em 0 0.2em 1em; width:30em; border:1px #aaa solid;"
, + Traffic in Port-Alfred (2003)
, - style="background:#bdbbd7;color:#000080;font-size:105%;"
, align=center, ''Imported goods'' , ,
t
, -
, align=left ,
Bauxite
Bauxite is a sedimentary rock with a relatively high aluminium content. It is the world's main source of aluminium and gallium. Bauxite consists mostly of the aluminium minerals gibbsite (Al(OH)3), boehmite (γ-AlO(OH)) and diaspore (α-AlO(O ...
, , t
, -
, align=left ,
Petroleum coke
Petroleum coke, abbreviated coke or petcoke, is a final carbon-rich solid material that derives from oil refining, and is one type of the group of fuels referred to as cokes. Petcoke is the coke that, in particular, derives from a final cracki ...
, , t
, -
, align=left ,
Caustic soda , , t
, -
, align=left ,
Fuel oil
Fuel oil is any of various fractions obtained from the distillation of petroleum (crude oil). Such oils include distillates (the lighter fractions) and residues (the heavier fractions). Fuel oils include heavy fuel oil, marine fuel oil (MFO), bun ...
, , t
, -
, align=left ,
Fluorite , , t
, - style="background:#bdbbd7"
, align=center , ''Exported goods'' , , 930,000 t
, -
, align=left ,
Aluminum
Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. It has ...
, , t
, - style="background:#bdbbd7"
, align=center , Goods in transit , , t
Port-Alfred is the largest port in the
Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region and has been owned by
Alcan since 1924. It is the main entryway for the natural resources the region's
aluminum smelter
Aluminium (aluminum in AmE, American and CanE, Canadian English) is a chemical element with the Symbol (chemistry), symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately o ...
s require. In 2006, 5.5 million tonnes of raw and manufactured material passed through these installations.
Port Alfred, Canada. DNV Publications. 2008. Retrieved 2013-02-01.
The Compagnie de Pulpe de Chicoutimi built the first port facilities on the Ha! Ha! Bay in the early twentieth century. Port-Alfred's mill and deep-water port made shipping pulp overseas much easier than Chicoutimi's port facilities, which were limited by the Saguenay River's shallow northern arm. The Port-Alfred Quay was opened in 1915. In 1924, the Compagnie de Pulpe de Chicoutimi's bankruptcy forced the company to sell its transportation infrastructure including the Port-Alfred port facilities to
Alcan. The port was redeveloped to be able to receive
bauxite
Bauxite is a sedimentary rock with a relatively high aluminium content. It is the world's main source of aluminium and gallium. Bauxite consists mostly of the aluminium minerals gibbsite (Al(OH)3), boehmite (γ-AlO(OH)) and diaspore (α-AlO(O ...
and other materials needed for aluminum production and for shipping the Port-Alfred Pulp and Paper Corporation's
newsprint
Newsprint is a low-cost, non-archival paper consisting mainly of wood pulp and most commonly used to print newspapers and other publications and advertising material. Invented in 1844 by Charles Fenerty of Nova Scotia, Canada, it usually has an ...
. Duncan Quay was completed in 1938 and Powell Quay in 1948. Since 1976,
icebreakers
An icebreaker is a special-purpose ship or boat designed to move and navigate through ice-covered waters, and provide safe waterways for other boats and ships. Although the term usually refers to ice-breaking ships, it may also refer to smaller ...
have kept Port-Alfred's port facilities accessible year-round.
In 2000, Alcan entrusted the management of Powell Quay to the Saguenay Port Authority.
[Le transport des marchandises](_blank)
Ministère des Transports. 2002. Retrieved 2013-02-01.
Port Alfred's Quays:
Duncan Quay:
Rio Tinto Alcan has owned Duncan Quay since its construction in 1938. This quay imports raw material and exports aluminum. It is 386 metres long, has two berths, and is 11.9 metres deep at low tide.
[Situation géographique](_blank)
Précicast. 1998. Retrieved 2013-02-01. It is connected to a railway. It can accommodate ships of over 69,000 tonnes.
Powell Quay: The Saguenay Port Authority has owned Powell Quay since 2000. It mainly exports finished goods and secondary processing products overseas and imports Alcan's liquid bulk. Before Abitibi-Consolidated closed in 2003, the quay also exported newsprint.
It is 347 metres long, has four berths, and is 10 to 10.9 metres deep at low tide.
A railway also passes through the quay. It can accommodate ships of over 69,000 tonnes.
Between 130 and 140 ships dock at Port-Alfred each year.
They mainly originate from bauxite-exporting countries like
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
,
Ghana
Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...
, and
Guinea
Guinea ( ),, fuf, 𞤘𞤭𞤲𞤫, italic=no, Gine, wo, Gine, nqo, ߖߌ߬ߣߍ߫, bm, Gine officially the Republic of Guinea (french: République de Guinée), is a coastal country in West Africa. It borders the Atlantic Ocean to the we ...
and carry
bauxite
Bauxite is a sedimentary rock with a relatively high aluminium content. It is the world's main source of aluminium and gallium. Bauxite consists mostly of the aluminium minerals gibbsite (Al(OH)3), boehmite (γ-AlO(OH)) and diaspore (α-AlO(O ...
,
petroleum coke
Petroleum coke, abbreviated coke or petcoke, is a final carbon-rich solid material that derives from oil refining, and is one type of the group of fuels referred to as cokes. Petcoke is the coke that, in particular, derives from a final cracki ...
,
sodium hydroxide
Sodium hydroxide, also known as lye and caustic soda, is an inorganic compound with the formula NaOH. It is a white solid ionic compound consisting of sodium cations and hydroxide anions .
Sodium hydroxide is a highly caustic base and alkali ...
,
fuel oil
Fuel oil is any of various fractions obtained from the distillation of petroleum (crude oil). Such oils include distillates (the lighter fractions) and residues (the heavier fractions). Fuel oils include heavy fuel oil, marine fuel oil (MFO), bun ...
, and
fluorite. The port also exports most of the aluminum ingots produced in the region's four smelters.
= Port of Grande-Anse
=
style="float:right; text-align:right; margin:0.2em 0 0.2em 1em; width:30em; border:1px #aaa solid;"
, + Traffic in the Port of Grande-Anse (2007)
[2007 Annual Report - Port Saguenay](_blank)
Saguenay Port Authority. 2007. Retrieved 2013-05-08.
, - style="background:#bdbbd7;color:#000080;font-size:105%;"
, align="center", ''Imported goods'', , 141,814
t, , align="center", ''Exported goods'', , 98,082 t
, -
, align=left ,
De-icing salt, , t , , align=left,
Wood pulp
Pulp is a lignocellulosic fibrous material prepared by chemically or mechanically separating cellulose fibers from wood, fiber crops, waste paper, or rags. Mixed with water and other chemical or plant-based additives, pulp is the major raw mate ...
, , t
, -
, align=left ,
Pitch , , t , , align=left,
Aluminum
Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. It has ...
, , t
, -
, align=left ,
Coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen.
Coal is formed when dea ...
, , t , , align=left,
Timber
Lumber is wood that has been processed into dimensional lumber, including beams and planks or boards, a stage in the process of wood production. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing (floors, wall panels, wi ...
, , t
, -
, align=left , Boxed goods , , t , , align=left, Boxed goods, , t
, -
, align=left ,
Granite
Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergro ...
, , t, , align=left,
, -
, align=left ,
Bricks , , t, , align=left, , ,
, - style="background:#bdbbd7"
, , , , , align=center, Goods in transit , , 239,896 t
The Grande-Anse Maritime Terminal (Port of Saguenay) is the only publicly owned port in Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean.
[Port of Saguenay](_blank)
Saguenay Port Authority. 2005. Retrieved 2013-02-01. It is a member of the Association of Canadian Port Authorities. It originally imported hydrocarbons but it progressively began transporting forest products, general merchandise, and liquid and dry bulk.
[General Information - History](_blank)
Saguenay Port Authority. 2005. Retrieved 2013-02-01. In 2000, its annual total capacity increased to 600,000 tonnes.
It was originally built in 1985 to offset the closure of the port in Chicoutimi and to relocate oil tanks outside of the city's downtown area. The Grande-Anse Maritime Terminal received its
letters patent
Letters patent ( la, litterae patentes) ( always in the plural) are a type of legal instrument in the form of a published written order issued by a monarch, president or other head of state, generally granting an office, right, monopoly, titl ...
in 1999 from the Canadian government and became the Saguenay Port Authority (Port of Saguenay).
Marcel-Dionne Quay: The quay was named after
Marcel Dionne
Marcel Elphège "Little Beaver" Dionne (born August 3, 1951) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey centre who played 18 seasons in the National Hockey League for the Detroit Red Wings, Los Angeles Kings and New York Rangers. Marcel Dionn ...
, the federal
Member of Parliament
A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...
for
Chicoutimi—Le Fjord
Chicoutimi—Le Fjord (formerly known as Chicoutimi) is a federal electoral district in Quebec, Canada, that has been represented in the House of Commons of Canada since 1925. The riding consists of the northern part of the Chicoutimi borough o ...
from 1979 to 1984. It is 286 metres long, has two berths and is 13.8 metres deep at low tide. It is open year-round and can accommodate ships of over 100,000 tonnes.
[Port Facilities - Grande-Anse Maritime Terminal](_blank)
Saguenay Port Authority. 2005. Retrieved 2013-02-01.
Since 2004, the Grande-Anse Maritime Terminal has complied with the International Ship and Port Facility Security Code, allowing it to receive foreign ships.
Rail
Although railways were built in
Chicoutimi by 1893, locomotives did not arrive in Bagotville until 1910. The Compagnie de Pulpe de Chicoutimi created an affiliate in 1909, the Compagnie de chemin de fer de la Baie des Ha! Ha!, to build a railway linking the Chicoutimi
pulp mill
A pulp mill is a manufacturing facility that converts wood chips or other plant fiber sources into a thick fiber board which can be shipped to a paper mill for further processing. Pulp can be manufactured using mechanical, semi-chemical, or ful ...
to the quay in Bagotville. The line was originally part of the Roberval-Saguenay rail network.
Alcan bought the railway in 1925 after the Compagnie de Pulpe de Chicoutimi's bankruptcy the previous year. It used the railway to bring raw materials from Port-Alfred to its aluminum smelter in
Arvida. The rail network expanded after the construction of new smelters in the region. Tracks were laid in the La Baie Borough to service plants in Grande-Baie and Laterrière.
[Les chemins de fer d'intérêt local (CFIL)](_blank)
Le patrimoine férroviaire du Québec. Retrieved 2013-02-01.
Every year, 87,700 full boxcars rode to or from Port-Alfred on the Roberval-Saguenay network.
The network employed 121 people and used eleven locomotives to transport 7,540,000 tonnes of materials annually.
Air
Bagotville Airport (YBG)
World Airport Codes. 2013. Retrieved 2013-02-01. is
Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean's main civilian airport and shares its facilities with 3 Wing Bagotville. It handles 90,000 passengers a year.
[Jean-Marc Tremblay]
Une bonne année pour l'aérogare de Bagotville
Le Réveil. 17 May 2007. Retrieved 2013-02-01. In 2000, the civilian facilities were given to the
City of Saguenay by
Transport Canada
Transport Canada (french: Transports Canada) is the department within the Government of Canada responsible for developing regulations, policies and services of road, rail, marine and air transportation in Canada. It is part of the Transportati ...
; Promotion Saguenay manages the airport.
[Saguenay-Bagotville Airport (YBG)](_blank)
Tourisme Québec. Retrieved 2013-02-01. Flights to
Montreal
Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...
and other
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 ...
destinations take off daily. Since 2006 and 2008 respectively,
Sunwing Airlines and
Air Transat
Air Transat is a Canadian airline based in Montreal, Quebec. Founded in 1986, it is the country's third-largest airline behind Air Canada and WestJet, operating scheduled and charter flights serving 60 destinations in 25 countries. Air Transa ...
have offered international flights to southern destinations in the winter.
[Airlines](_blank)
Bagotville Airport. 2008. Retrieved 2013-02-01.
Culture and society
Education
La Baie's first
school
A school is an educational institution designed to provide learning spaces and learning environments for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is sometimes compuls ...
house opened in 1841.
In the 1920s, these small country schools were replaced by larger institutions in villages and towns.
[Jacques Ouellet. "Le développement du système scolaire au Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean depuis 150 ans." Saguenayensia 30.1 January–March 1988. Page 13.] According to authors Luc Noppen and Lucie K. Morisset, "There are still some rare examples, although not always in good shape, on the rural roads located on the town of La Baie's territory."
The first Ha! Ha! Bay
school boards were created in the 1860s. The Bagotville School Board (French: ''Commission scolaire de Bagotville'') was founded in 1862,
[Historique](_blank)
Commission scolaire des Rives-du-Saguenay. 2011. Retrieved 3013-02-01. followed by school boards in Grande-Baie in 1880 and Port-Alfred in 1918. These three school boards merged in 1960 and became the Ha! Ha! Bay Local School Board (French: ''Commission scolaire locale de la Baie-des-Ha! Ha!'').
La Baie has been under the jurisdiction of the Saguenay Riverside School Board (French: ''Commission scolaire des Rives du Saguenay'') since 1998. During the 2008-2009 academic year, there were four
elementary schools
A primary school (in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and South Africa), junior school (in Australia), elementary school or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary ed ...
in the borough: the George-Vanier and Sainte-Thérèse Schools in Bagotville, the Médéric-Gravel School in Port-Alfred, and the Saint-Joseph School in Grande-Baie. There are 1,085 elementary students enrolled in these schools.
[Liste officielle des établissements 2012-2013](_blank)
Commission Scolaire des Rives-du-Saguenay. 2012. Retrieved 2013-02-01. The only
high school
A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...
in the Ha! Ha! Bay area, the ''Polyvalente de La Baie'', has 1,200 students.
The Durocher
adult education
Adult education, distinct from child education, is a practice in which adults engage in systematic and sustained self-educating activities in order to gain new forms of knowledge, skills, attitudes, or values. Merriam, Sharan B. & Brockett, Ralp ...
centre in the Grande-Baie sector has 575 students.
Vocational training is the highest level of education available within the borough. The ''Centre de formation professionnelle de La Baie'' offers its 138 students
training programs in metallurgy, cabinetwork, forestry, and composite materials. The closest post-secondary institutions (CEGEPs and universities) are in Chicoutimi.
The borough also has a branch of the Saguenay public library network located in the same building as the Théâtre municipal.
Religion
According to the
Institut de la statistique du Québec, the
Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
had 18,865 adherents
[Total population by major denominations, Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean administrative region, 2001](_blank)
Institut de la statistique du Québec. 11 July 2003. Retrieved 2013-02-01. in the borough in 2001, or 96% of the population. The borough is divided into two parishes: Saint-Alexis and Saint-Alphonse, which includes the Saint-Édouard, Saint-Marc, and Notre-Dame-de-la-Baie Churches.
Atheists were the second largest group with 460 (2%),
followed by
Protestants
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...
with 240 adherents (1.3%),
and other Christian denominations at 135 (0.6%).
Ha! Ha! Bay residents practising other religions make up less than 0.1% of the population. The borough has two cemeteries (Saint-Alphonse & Saint-Alexis and Saint-Édouard) managed by the ''Corporation des Cimetières Catholiques de La Baie''.
Establishment of the Catholic Church in Ha! Ha! Bay
Permanent outposts of the
Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
in
Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean were limited to a few missions near
Saint-Jean Lake and at the
trading post
A trading post, trading station, or trading house, also known as a factory, is an establishment or settlement where goods and services could be traded.
Typically the location of the trading post would allow people from one geographic area to tr ...
in Chicoutimi until about 1840 when the first colonists arrived in Ha! Ha! Bay. The first chapel was erected in 1842 in Grande-Baie; its first regular priest was Reverend Charles Pouliot.
The Catholic Church's role as a catalyst for colonization was strengthened with the arrival of the
Oblates
In Christianity (especially in the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and Methodist traditions), an oblate is a person who is specifically dedicated to God or to God's service.
Oblates are individuals, either laypersons or clergy, normally livi ...
in 1844.
The order repaired the Grande-Baie chapel and served the Chez Mars village (Bagotville). They advocated the building of a church in the Ha! Ha! Bay area, although they only actively participated in the establishment of the Grande-Baie
parish council. The Oblates left the region in 1853.
Reverend Léandre Gill was sent by the Church in 1853 to continue where the Oblates left off. He was given a difficult mission: to merge all of the places of worship in Ha! Ha! Bay.
Gill was tasked with countering any possible influence from the
Protestants
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...
who came to work for
William Price's sawmills.
He settled in Saint-Alphose (Bagotville) and served at Saint-Alexis (Grande-Baie) twice a month.
The Saint-Alphose-de-Liguori Parish in Bagotville was canonically established in 1857.
The two parishes did not have any resident priests until 1858.
Grande-Baie's Saint-Alexis Parish was founded in 1861.
Construction of churches
Saint-Alphose-de-Liguori is the first and oldest church in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region. It was built in Bagotville between 1860 and 1862.
The stone church tower was not built until 1867
and the interior was not completed until 1887.
Grande-Baie's Saint-Alexis, Ha! Ha! Bay's second church, was completed in 1868.
In 1902, the
Marist Brothers took over the Sainte-Thérèse School in Bagotville, which was located at the northwest intersection of Victoria and De la Fabrique Streets before its current location was built in 1942.
The soeurs du Bon-Conseil ran the newly rebuilt Médéric-Gravel School in 1922 after the 1918 original burned down.
Two schools for boys were founded in 1927: the Saint-Alphose Academy (French: ''académie Saint-Alphose'') in Bagotville
and the Saint-Édouard College (French: ''collège Saint-Joseph'')
in Port-Alfred. They were administered by the
Brothers of the Sacred Heart and the
Brothers of the Christian Schools
french: Frères des Écoles Chrétiennes
, image = Signum Fidei.jpg
, image_size = 175px
, caption =
, abbreviation = FSC
, nickname = Lasallians
, named_after =
, formation ...
respectively.
The third church was opened in May 1930 to replace the Saint-Édouard Chapel in Port-Alfred, which was built for the canonical establishment of the new town in 1918.
The Saint-Édouard Church was built in a thirteenth-century English style.
A quarter of the construction costs were provided the London financiers that owned the Port Alfred Pulp and Paper Company.
The Sisters of Sainte-Marie-de-la-Présentation, who arrived from France in 1934, opened a new convent in Grande-Baie in 1940.
In 1948, the Brothers of the Sacred Heart built the Saint-Joseph College in Grande-Baie.
The Saint-Marc Parish in Bagotville, canonically established in 1953, blessed its new church in 1956.
Saguenay architect Paul-Marie Côté conceptualized the building that "introduced modernism to Quebec religious architecture in a spectacular way."
[Claude Bergeron. L'architecture des églises du Québec 1940-1985. Sainte-Foy, Les Presses de l'Université Laval. 1987. 383 p.] In February 2009, the church was named a Quebec historical site by Minister Christine St-Pierre. The decision was retroactive on June 25, 2008.
The fourth and final church built in the bay area was in the Notre-Dame-de-La-Baie Parish in Port-Alfred in 1962.
Its wooden frame won a prize in the 1965 Canadian Aesthetic Competition.
Health and social services
The Ha! Ha! Bay Hospital (French: ''Hôpital de la baie des Ha! Ha!'') in the Bagotville sector is the only health and social services centre (CSSS) in the borough. It includes the St-Joseph and Bagotville long-term care centres (CHSLD). It has twenty-five short-term beds and 127 long-term beds.
[Un modèle d'organisation intégrée pour le Saguenay-LacSaint-Jean [Archive]](_blank)
Ordre des infirmières et infirmier auxiliaires du Québec. September 2005. Retrieved 2013-02-01. The community clinic (
CLSC
CLSCs (''centre local de services communautaires'', local community service centre) in Quebec are free clinics and hospitals run and maintained by the Quebec government. They are a form of community health centre.
The service was launched in the e ...
), which is also in Bagotville, is known as the ''Centre Cléophas-Claveau''.
La Baie has three medical clinics, four dental clinics, and a mental health treatment centre called ''Le centre de rencontre Le Phare''. It also has ''Le havre du Fjord'', a drug and alcohol abuse treatment centre. The ''Maison de l'espoir du Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean'' assist youths who have family difficulties or have dropped out of school.
[Service de documentation en études et interventions régionales - Groupe de travail d'actualisation de la stratégie québécoise d'action face au suicide - Secteur Domaine-du-Roy](_blank)
Université du Québec à Chicoutimi. 2003. Retrieved 2013-02-01.
Arts and entertainment
Museums
The borough contains two museums.
= Musée du Fjord
=
The Fjord Museum (French: ''musée du Fjord'') in the Grande-Baie sector is dedicated to the
Ha! Ha! Bay and
Saguenay Fjord
Saguenay Fjord National Park (french: parc national du Fjord-du-Saguenay) is a provincial park located in Quebec, Canada. In the regions of Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, Charlevoix, Côte-Nord, and Bas-Saint-Laurent, the park is situated along the ...
's historical, artistic, and environmental heritage. From 1967 to 1983, it was known as the ''Musée Monseigneur-Dufour''.
[Musée du Fjord, 45 Years Already!](_blank)
Musée du Fjord. 2012. Retrieved 2013-02-03. In 1996, the
Saguenay Flood
The Saguenay flood (french: Déluge du Saguenay) was a series of flash floods on July 19 and 20, 1996 that hit the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean region of Quebec, Canada. It was the biggest overland flood in 20th-century Canadian history.
History ...
caused a considerable amount of damage to the museum. It was reopened in 2004 after being renovated and expanded.
= The Air Defence Museum
=
The Air Defence Museum on the
Bagotville military base is the only military aviation museum in Quebec.
[History](_blank)
Air Defence Museum. 2013. Retrieved 2013-02-03. It was inaugurated on June 18, 1997,
. Virtual Museum of Canada. 19 April 2012. Retrieved 20313-02-03. and is located in what was once a Protestant chapel. In the surrounding commemorative park, visitors can see an F-86 Sabre, a CF-100 Canuck, a CT-133 Silver Star, a CF-5 Freedom Fighter, a CF-101 Voodoo, a Piasecki H-21
The Piasecki H-21 Workhorse/Shawnee is an American helicopter, the fourth of a line of tandem rotor helicopters designed and built by Piasecki Helicopter (later Boeing Vertol). Commonly called "the flying banana", it was a multi-mission helicop ...
, and a Mig-23ML.[The Commemorative Park](_blank)
Bagotville Air Defence Museum. 2013. Retrieved 2013-02-03.
Entertainment
The borough's auditorium, the ''théâtre du Palais municipal'', has a capacity of 2,300 people.[La salle [Archive]](_blank)
Palais municipal. 2009. Retrieved 2013-02-03. It is the borough's largest amphitheatre and one of the most-used gathering places in Saguenay.
Since 1988, the historical extravaganza ''La Fabuleuse Histoire d'un royaume'' has been performed every summer. Music and comedy shows are also presented year-round.[Accueil [Archive]](_blank)
. Palais municipal. 2009. Retrieved 2013-02-03.
Sports, parks, and recreation
Fishing
Ice fishing
Every winter, the ice on Ha! Ha! Bay becomes thick enough to support cabins and vehicles for ice fishing
Ice fishing is the practice of catching fish with lines and fish hooks or spears through an opening in the ice on a frozen body of water. Ice fishers may fish in the open or in heated enclosures, some with bunks and amenities.
Shelters
Longer ...
. At the height of the season, there are about 1,000 cabins mainly located around Grande-Baie, Les Battures, and L'Anse-à-Benjamin. Rockfish, lake smelt, ogac, Atlantic cod, and black turbot are fished there.
Salmon fly-fishing
The Mars River
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Roman god of war. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphe ...
is located between Bagotville and Port-Alfred. It runs from the mouth of Ha! Ha! Bay to the edges of the Laurentian Wildlife Reserve Laurentian (French: ''Laurentides'' or ''Laurentien'') may refer to:
*Relation to Saint Lawrence Geography
North America
*Laurentide Ice Sheet, the continental glacier covering much of North America during the Pleistocene Epoch
*Relating to the Sai ...
. It is officially recognized as a salmon
Salmon () is the common name for several list of commercially important fish species, commercially important species of euryhaline ray-finned fish from the family (biology), family Salmonidae, which are native to tributary, tributaries of the ...
river by the federal government and is protected until it reaches the Bec-Scie Outdoors Centre (French: ''Centre plein-air Bec-Scie''). It has ninety-two pools and about twenty potential spawning grounds.[COBRAM](_blank)
Organisme du bassin versant du Saguenay. Retrieved 2013-02-03.
Until it reaches the Laurentian Park, the river is maintained by the Mars River Sport Fishing Association (French: ''Association des pêcheurs sportifs de la Rivière-à-Mars Inc'' (APSRM)). It was founded in 1983 to protect, restore, and promote the Mars River's salmon population.
Association des Pêcheurs Sportifs de la Rivière à Mars. 2008. Retrieved 2013-02-03.
From 1894 to 1935, the Price Brothers Company ran a private club near the river. The construction of the Murailles Dam in 1930 and river driving until 1953 prevented the proliferation of salmon.[General Presentation](_blank)
Saumon Québec
2007. Retrieved 2012-02-03. The river was reseeded in 1976. It was closed to sport fishing
Recreational fishing, also called sport fishing or game fishing, is fishing for leisure, exercise or competition. It can be contrasted with commercial fishing, which is professional fishing for profit; or subsistence fishing, which is fishing ...
in 1985, but was reopened again in 1992. A fishway was constructed after the 1996 deluge that destroyed the original one built in 1986.
Other than salmon, there are seven other fish species found in the river: brook trout
The brook trout (''Salvelinus fontinalis'') is a species of freshwater fish in the char genus ''Salvelinus'' of the salmon family Salmonidae. It is native to Eastern North America in the United States and Canada, but has been introduced elsewhere ...
, longnose dace
The longnose dace (''Rhinichthys cataractae'') is a freshwater minnow native to North America. ''Rhinicthys'' means snout fish (reference to the long snout) and ''cataractae'' means of the cataract (first taken from Niagara Falls). Longnose dace ...
, Northern sucker, white sucker
The white sucker (''Catostomus commersonii)'' is a species of freshwater cypriniform fish inhabiting the upper Midwest and Northeast in North America, but it is also found as far south as Georgia and as far west as New Mexico. The fish is commonl ...
, American eel
The American eel (''Anguilla rostrata'') is a facultative catadromous fish found on the eastern coast of North America. Freshwater eels are fish belonging to the elopomorph superorder, a group of phylogenetically ancient teleosts. The America ...
, threespine stickleback
The three-spined stickleback (''Gasterosteus aculeatus'') is a fish native to most inland and coastal waters north of 30°N. It has long been a subject of scientific study for many reasons. It shows great morphological variation throughout its ra ...
, and northern pearl dace
The northern pearl dace (''Margariscus nachtriebi'') is a freshwater ray-finned fish in the family Cyprinidae
Cyprinidae is a family of freshwater fish commonly called the carp or minnow family. It includes the carps, the true minnows, and re ...
.
Hockey
The Jean-Claude-Tremblay Arena hosts the annual La Baie Pee-Wee hockey tournament.[Tournoi Pee-Wee Bantam de La Baie](_blank)
Association du hockey mineur de La Baie]. Retrieved 2013-02-03. The arena was named after Jean-Claude Tremblay
Joseph Henri Jean-Claude Tremblay (January 22, 1939 – December 7, 1994) was a Canadian ice hockey defenceman for the NHL Montreal Canadiens and the WHA Quebec Nordiques, notable for play-making and defensive skills.
Playing career
After an a ...
, a Bagotville native and former defenseman for the Montreal Canadiens
The Montreal CanadiensEven in English, the French spelling is always used instead of ''Canadians''. The French spelling of ''Montréal'' is also sometimes used in the English media. (french: link=no, Les Canadiens de Montréal), officially ...
and the Quebec Nordiques.[Jean-Claude Tremblay, hockey](_blank)
RDS. 1 January 2004. Retrieved 2013-02-03.
Parks
Ha! Ha! River Park
The Ha! Ha! River Park is located at the mouth of the Ha! Ha! River in the Grande-Baie sector. It was built three years after the 1996 floods
File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A Centennial Olympic Park bombing, bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical Anti-abortion violence, anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 8 ...
. The park is best known for its main attraction, the Ha! Ha! Pyramid
The Ha! Ha! Pyramid (french: links=yes, Pyramide des Ha! Ha!) is a contemporary art monument commemorating the Saguenay flood of 1996. Located in the district of La Baie in Saguenay, Quebec, the pyramid was named after the nearby Ha! Ha! Riv ...
, which was created by artist Jean-Jules Soucy. The Place des Ha! Ha! is located on the river's eastern bank in the old riverbed. Many cultural events are held in this municipal park.
Mars Park
This park is located at the mouth of the Mars River along Mars Street in the Bagotville sector. It contains a six-kilometre pedestrian and bicycle path with a panoramic view of Ha! Ha! Bay.
Eucher Trail
Eucher (or Eusher) Trail is a walking path along the Philippe Cove and the main capes of the northern shore of Ha! Ha! Bay. The path runs at an altitude of 100 metres.[Fédération québécoise de la marche. 2000. Répertoire des lieux de marches au Québec, De la promenade à la longue randonnée (3rd edition). Saint-Laurent, Éditions Bipède. 464 p. (), p. 411.]
Notable residents
* Louis de Gonzague Belley
Louis de Gonzague Belley, (February 3, 1863 – July 9, 1930) was a Canadian politician.
Born in St-Alexis de la Grande Baie, Canada East, he was a lawyer before being acclaimed at the age of 29 to the House of Commons of Canada for the Q ...
(1863-1930), politician
* Dean Bergeron
Dean Bergeron (born February 12, 1969, in La Baie, Quebec (now Saguenay, Quebec)) is a Paralympic athlete from Canada who competed mainly in category T52 sprint events in four Paralympic Games and is pursuing a career as an actuary.
Biography
...
(1969-), Paralympic athlete
* Paul-Edmond Gagnon (1909-1981), politician
* Jeannot Gilbert
Jeannot Gilbert (born December 29, 1940) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey forward who played 9 games in the National Hockey League for the Boston Bruins between 1963 and 1965. He also played 133 games in the World Hockey Association w ...
(1940-), hockey player
* Ghislain Harvey
Ghislain Harvey (born May 6, 1946 in Bagotville, Quebec) was a member of the Quebec Provincial Parliament from 1973 to 1976.
In the 1973 Quebec general election, Harvey was a candidate for the Liberal Party of Quebec in Dubuc and defeated Par ...
(1946-), politician
* Pierre Michaud
Pierre A. Michaud (April 17, 1936 – March 17, 2023) was a Canadian lawyer and judge. Michaud was Chief Justice of Quebec from 1994 to 2002.
Born in Port-Alfred, Quebec, he received a law degree from the Université de Montréal in 1960. He w ...
(1936-), judge
* Gérard-Raymond Morin (1940-), politician
* Alfred Tremblay (Derfla) (1856-1921), journalist, professor, and poet
* Jean-Claude Tremblay
Joseph Henri Jean-Claude Tremblay (January 22, 1939 – December 7, 1994) was a Canadian ice hockey defenceman for the NHL Montreal Canadiens and the WHA Quebec Nordiques, notable for play-making and defensive skills.
Playing career
After an a ...
(1939-1994), hockey player
* Valérie Maltais
Valérie Maltais (born July 4, 1990) is a Canadian short track speed skater and speed skater. She has won six world championship medals, including finishing second overall in 2012.
Career Early career
She began skating at the age of 6 and, in 20 ...
(1990-), Olympic athlete
* Orloge Simard (2012
File:2012 Events Collage V3.png, From left, clockwise: The passenger cruise ship Costa Concordia lies capsized after the Costa Concordia disaster; Damage to Casino Pier in Seaside Heights, New Jersey as a result of Hurricane Sandy; People gather ...
-), musical group, authors of the song "12 Pouces"
Further reading
*
*
References
Bibliography
*
*
*
External links
*
La Baie
{{Authority control
Populated places established in 1976
Populated places disestablished in 2002
Boroughs of Saguenay, Quebec
Former municipalities in Quebec
Former cities in Quebec