Rivière-du-Loup (; 2021 population 20,118) is a small

city A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...

on the south shore of the

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

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 ...

. The city is the seat for the

Rivière-du-Loup Regional County Municipality Rivière-du-Loup is a regional county municipality in the Bas-Saint-Laurent region of Quebec, Canada. Its most important city is Rivière-du-Loup, which contains more than half of the population. Major industries include pulp and paper, other woo ...

and the judicial district of Kamouraska. Its one of the largest cities in Bas-Saint-Laurent.

History

The city was named after the nearby

river A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of wate ...

, whose name means ''Wolf's River'' in

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

. This name may have come from a native tribe known as "Les Loups" ("The Wolves") or from the many

seals Seals may refer to: * Pinniped, a diverse group of semi-aquatic marine mammals, many of which are commonly called seals, particularly: ** Earless seal, or "true seal" ** Fur seal * Seal (emblem), a device to impress an emblem, used as a means of a ...

, known in French as ''loup-marin'' (sea wolves), once found at the river's mouth. Rivière-du-Loup was established in 1673 as the

seigneurie In English law, seignory or seigniory, spelled ''signiory'' in Early Modern English (; french: seigneur, lit=lord; la, senior, lit=elder), is the lordship (authority) remaining to a grantor after the grant of an estate in fee simple. ''Nulle terre ...

of Sieur Charles-Aubert de la Chesnaye. The community was incorporated as the village of Fraserville, in honour of early Scottish settler Alexander Fraser, in 1850, and became a city in 1910. The city reverted to its original name, Rivière-du-Loup, in 1919. Between 1850 and 1919, the city saw large increases in its anglophone population. Most of them left the region by the 1950s. Only 1% of the population still speaks English as its first language. In fall of 1950 Rivière-du-Loup was the site of a

nuclear accident A nuclear and radiation accident is defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as "an event that has led to significant consequences to people, the environment or the facility. Examples include lethal effects to individuals, lar ...

. A

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...

B-50 was returning a nuclear bomb to the United States. The bomb was released due to engine troubles, and then was destroyed in a non-nuclear detonation before it hit the ground. The explosion scattered nearly 100 pounds (45 kg) of uranium (U-238).

Demographics

In the

2021 Census of Population The 2021 Canadian census was a detailed enumeration of the Canadian population with a reference date of May 11, 2021. It follows the 2016 Canadian census, which recorded a population of 35,151,728. The overall response rate was 98%, which is sli ...

conducted by

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 ...

, Rivière-du-Loup had a population of living in of its total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of . With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.

Transportation

Rivière-du-Loup is a traditional stopping point between

Quebec City Quebec City ( or ; french: Ville de Québec), officially Québec (), is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Quebec. As of July 2021, the city had a population of 549,459, and the Communauté métrop ...

, the

Maritimes The Maritimes, also called the Maritime provinces, is a region of Eastern Canada consisting of three provinces: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. The Maritimes had a population of 1,899,324 in 2021, which makes up 5.1% of Ca ...

and the

Gaspé Peninsula The Gaspé Peninsula, also known as Gaspesia (; ), is a peninsula along the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River that extends from the Matapedia Valley in Quebec, Canada, into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. It is separated from New Brunswick o ...

. The

Trans-Canada Highway The Trans-Canada Highway ( French: ; abbreviated as the TCH or T-Can) is a transcontinental federal–provincial highway system that travels through all ten provinces of Canada, from the Pacific Ocean on the west coast to the Atlantic Ocean o ...

turns south here, transferring from Autoroute 20 to Autoroute 85 and continuing southwards to

Edmundston Edmundston is a city in Madawaska County, New Brunswick, Canada. On 1 January 2023, Edmundston will expanded, annexing the village of Rivière-Verte and parts of the local service districts of the parish of Saint-Jacques and the parish of Sai ...

New Brunswick New Brunswick (french: Nouveau-Brunswick, , locally ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. It is the only province with both English and ...

. There is a

ferry A ferry is a ship, watercraft or amphibious vehicle used to carry passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A passenger ferry with many stops, such as in Venice, Italy, is sometimes called a water bus or water taxi ...

that crosses the river (fleuve St Laurent) to Saint-Siméon on the north shore. The city is also served by the

Rivière-du-Loup Airport Rivière-du-Loup Airport is located south southwest of Rivière-du-Loup, Quebec, Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward ...

(

IATA airport code An IATA airport code, also known as an IATA location identifier, IATA station code, or simply a location identifier, is a three-character alphanumeric geocode designating many airports and metropolitan areas around the world, defined by the ...

YRI). The town can also be reached by Via Rail on the train named The Ocean, between

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 Halifax.

Culture

Notable events in the city include the annual Festival Vues dans la tête de... film festival."Un festival du film à Rivière-du-Loup"
Ici Radio-Canada, January 16, 2013.

Media

Television

Rivière-du-Loup is an unusual television market, as each of its stations has two transmitters in the city. The city's hilly terrain causes residents of the lower, western portions of the city to experience frequent signal dropout. That makes it all but impossible for a television station to serve the entire area with a single transmitter. Accordingly, each station in the city has both a primary transmitter and a "nested" low-power

rebroadcaster A broadcast relay station, also known as a satellite station, relay transmitter, broadcast translator (U.S.), re-broadcaster (Canada), repeater (two-way radio) or complementary station (Mexico), is a broadcast transmitter which repeats (or tran ...

to serve viewers in the western part of the city who cannot receive the primary signal. Until August 2021, the city was served by Canada's only triple-stick operation, in which all three of its licensed stations are owned by the same company,

Télé Inter-Rives Télé Inter-Rives ("Inter-Riverbank Television", literal translation) is a broadcasting company based in Rivière-du-Loup, Quebec. The Simard family holds a 55% stake in Télé Inter-Rives, with Quebecor (owner of Groupe TVA and the TVA network) ...

. This would be pared down to a twin-stick following the closedown of CKRT-DT in August 2021. Defunct station: Rivière-du-Loup is a mandatory market for digital television conversion; Télé Inter-Rives converted all of its transmitters to digital prior to the deadline of August 30, 2011. Unlike most larger cities in Quebec, Rivière-du-Loup has no local

Télé-Québec The Société de télédiffusion du Québec (; en, Quebec Television Broadcasting Corporation), branded as Télé-Québec (), is a Canadian French-language public educational television network in the province of Quebec. It is a provincial Crown ...

outlet, though Rimouski's CIVB-DT is available on the Vidéotron system in Rivière-du-Loup. Following the closedown of CKRT-DT, Radio-Canada would be seen on Vidéotron from

CJBR-DT CJBR-DT, virtual channel 2.1 ( UHF digital channel 45), branded on-air as ICI Est du Québec, is an Ici Radio-Canada Télé owned-and-operated station licensed to Rimouski, Quebec, Canada. The station is owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corpora ...

Rimouski.

Radio

* FM 89.5 - CJBR-FM-1,

Ici Radio-Canada Première Ici Radio-Canada Première (formerly Première Chaîne) is a Canadian French language, French-language radio network, the news and information service of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (known as Société Radio-Canada in French), the Public ...

* FM 90.7 - CBRX-FM-3, Ici Musique * FM 103.7 -

CIEL-FM CIEL-FM is a French-language Canadian radio station located in Rivière-du-Loup, Quebec. Owned and operated by Radio CJFP (1986) ltée (part of the Groupe Radio Simard), it broadcasts on 103.7 MHz with an effective radiated power of 60,000 w ...

, AC * FM 107.1 - CIBM-FM, CHR * FM 107.9 - CIBM-FM-1 (local CIBM rebroadcaster)

Notable people

Sir

John A. Macdonald Sir John Alexander Macdonald (January 10 or 11, 1815 – June 6, 1891) was the first prime minister of Canada, serving from 1867 to 1873 and from 1878 to 1891. The dominant figure of Canadian Confederation, he had a political career that sp ...

, Canada's first prime minister, had a summer home in Rivière-du-Loup. People born there include: *

Danielle April Danielle April (born July 1, 1949) is a Canadian artist working in the fields of painting, sculpture, photography, installation art, printmaking and drawing. April's work often explores time and memory. Life and work Danielle April was born on J ...

, artist * Joseph Jean Benoit, 31st Canadian Surgeon General *

Nicolas Dickner Nicolas Dickner (born 1972 in Rivière-du-Loup, Quebec) is a Canadian novelist and short story writer. He is best known for his 2005 novel ''Nikolski'', which has won numerous literary awards in Canada both in its original French and translated E ...

, writer *Dr.

John McLoughlin John McLoughlin, baptized Jean-Baptiste McLoughlin, (October 19, 1784 – September 3, 1857) was a French-Canadian, later American, Chief Factor and Superintendent of the Columbia District of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Vancouver fro ...

, known as "the father of

Oregon Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...

" * Louis-Philippe Picard, member of the

House of Commons of Canada The House of Commons of Canada (french: Chambre des communes du Canada) is the lower house of the Parliament of Canada. Together with the Crown and the Senate of Canada, they comprise the bicameral legislature of Canada. The House of Common ...

* Maurice Arthur Pope, soldier and diplomat * Alex Belzile, professional hockey player * Allan Sirois, professional hockey player *

Alexandre-Antonin Taché Alexandre-Antonin Taché, O.M.I., (23 July 1823 – 22 June 1894) was a Canadian Roman Catholic priest, missionary of the Oblate order, author, and the first Archbishop of Saint Boniface in Manitoba, Canada. Early life Alexandre-Antonin Tac ...

, first Archbishop of Saint Boniface

References

External links

Official city site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Riviere-du-Loup Cities and towns in Quebec Quebec populated places on the Saint Lawrence River