Côte-Nord

Côte-Nord (Region 09) (, ; ) is an administrative region of Quebec, on the Quebec-Labrador Peninsula, Canada.

The region runs along the St. Lawrence River and then the Gulf of St. Lawrence, from Tadoussac to the limits of Labrador, leaning against the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean to the west, the Côte-Nord penetrates deep into Northern Quebec.

With the motto: ''Between nature and grandeur'', the Côte-Nord is made up of 99% public land, it is the second largest region after Nord-du-Québec, which occupies 51% of Quebec's territory.

History

The origins of the settlement of the Côte-Nord precede by a few millennia the population movements that began in the middle of the 19th century.

Archaeologists tell us that the main prehistoric cultures, called " archaic", were based on three sets of groups coming from the southwest, from as far away as the Great Lakes by the St. Lawrence River, those coming from the great plateaus of the interior and James Bay and those from Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and New England.

From the 14th to the 17th century, known history, the presence of Europeans in the regions of the North Shore and the Gulf of Saint Lawrence began with the periodic visits of the Basques and Breton fishermen.
Until the advent of the World War II (1939-1945) the growth of the population occurred in concert with the development of the pulp and paper industry.

In the 1950s, mining caused massive immigration.

"...From Kegashka to Blanc-Sablon, the inhabitants are individualistic, dwell on Crown Lands — often as squatters — and keep jealously to their self-appropriated fishing spots, whence their dispersion." (Bussières, P., p.1, 1963)

Geography

The Côte-Nord is bounded to the west by the Capitale-Nationale and Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean regions and, to the north, by the Nord-du-Québec region and by Labrador. To the south, it extends from Tadoussac to the east of Blanc-Sablon, encompassing Anticosti Island and part of the Estuary and Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Côte-Nord was created as an administrative region in 1966. Stretching over nearly 1,250 km and with an area of 196,058 km², the administrative region roughly includes the basins of all the rivers that flow into the St. Lawrence between Tadoussac and Blanc-Sablon.

Important landmarks of Côte-Nord include Anticosti Island, the Mingan Archipelago National Park Reserve, and the Manicouagan Reservoir.

A territorial dispute between Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador concerning the border between Côte-Nord and Labrador was set on 2 March 1927 by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The boundary was entrenched in the Canadian constitution upon Newfoundland joining confederation in 1949. While this border has not been formally accepted by the Quebec government, the Henri Dorion Commission (Commission d'étude sur l'intégrité du territoire du Québec) concluded in the early 1970s that Quebec no longer has a legal claim to Labrador.

Protection of natural heritage

Several portions of territory on the Côte-Nord are dedicated specifically to the protection and maintenance of biological diversity. The region has 262 wildlife habitats, 172 aquatic bird concentration areas, 12 heronries, 66 bird colonies on islands, peninsulas or cliffs, 4 muskrat habitats and 8 white-tailed deer containment areas on Anticosti Island.

Overwiew of the diversity
Geographical