Havre-Saint-Pierre () is a municipality located on the north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, in

Côte-Nord Côte-Nord (Region 09) (, ; ) is an List of regions of Quebec, administrative region of Quebec, on the Quebec-Labrador peninsula, Quebec-Labrador Peninsula, Canada. The region runs along the St. Lawrence River and then the Gulf of St. Lawrence, ...

region, Minganie RCM,

Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

History

In 1857, a group of

Acadian The Acadians (; , ) are an ethnic group descended from the French who settled in the New France colony of Acadia during the 17th and 18th centuries. Today, most descendants of Acadians live in either the Northern American region of Acadia, ...

families arrived, in 1872, the Parish of Saint-Pierre-de-la-Pointe-aux-Esquimaux was officially established, the same year its post office opened under the name Esquimaux Point. In 1873, the place was incorporated as a municipality. In 1924, the post office changed its name to Havre-Saint-Pierre, followed by the town in 1927, in order to focus on the harbor, which characterizes the area, while retaining the original parish name. It remained the largest town on the North Shore until 1936 when it was overtaken by

Baie-Comeau Baie-Comeau () is a city in the Côte-Nord region of the province of Quebec, Canada. It is located on the shores of the St. Lawrence River, and is the seat of Manicouagan Regional County Municipality. It is near the mouth of the Manicouagan Ri ...

. Since 1948, the Quebec Iron and Titanium Company mines deposits of

ilmenite Ilmenite is a titanium-iron oxide mineral with the idealized formula . It is a weakly magnetic black or steel-gray solid. Ilmenite is the most important ore of titanium and the main source of titanium dioxide, which is used in paints, printi ...

, a mineral composed of iron and titanium, at a site some north. The Chemin de fer de la Rivière Romaine brings it by rail cars to Havre-Saint-Pierre.

Geography

Havre-Saint-Pierre is located in a place formerly known as ''Rade aux Esquimaux'' or ''Pointe aux Esquimaux'', north of the Mingan Archipelago and Anticosti Island, on the shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The municipality is located 1000 km east of

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

, 870 km northeast of

Quebec City Quebec City 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 Census Metropolitan Area (including surrounding communities) had a populati ...

and 200 km from Sept-Îles.

Access Access may refer to: Companies and organizations * ACCESS (Australia), an Australian youth network * Access (credit card), a former credit card in the United Kingdom * Access Co., a Japanese software company * Access International Advisors, a hed ...

Geology

The Havre Saint-Pierre - Mingan region is located in the geological province of Grenville. It includes rocks of

Precambrian The Precambrian ( ; or pre-Cambrian, sometimes abbreviated pC, or Cryptozoic) is the earliest part of Earth's history, set before the current Phanerozoic Eon. The Precambrian is so named because it preceded the Cambrian, the first period of t ...

and

Ordovician The Ordovician ( ) is a geologic period and System (geology), system, the second of six periods of the Paleozoic Era (geology), Era, and the second of twelve periods of the Phanerozoic Eon (geology), Eon. The Ordovician spans 41.6 million years f ...

age. The Precambrian is represented by

metamorphosed Metamorphic rocks arise from the transformation of existing rock to new types of rock in a process called metamorphism. The original rock (protolith) is subjected to temperatures greater than and, often, elevated pressure of or more, causi ...

and intrusive

sedimentary rocks Sedimentary rocks are types of rock formed by the cementation of sediments—i.e. particles made of minerals (geological detritus) or organic matter (biological detritus)—that have been accumulated or deposited at Earth's surface. Sedim ...

. The Ordovician rocks, of sedimentary nature, belong to the Mingan Iceland group which is divided into two formations: the Romaine Formation and the Mingan Formation. A study by Quebec Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility (1986) covers several aspects of a territory 5 to 13 km wide and 70 km long along the coast from Havre-Saint-Pierre to Baie-Johan-Beetz. From an ecological and morpho-sedimentological point of view, this region and the sub-region, Havre-Saint-Pierre and Nickerson Bay, are extremely diverse. Whether they were formed by erosion or

sedimentation Sedimentation is the deposition of sediments. It takes place when particles in suspension settle out of the fluid in which they are entrained and come to rest against a barrier. This is due to their motion through the fluid in response to th ...

processes, or whether they were subjected to or resulted from extreme climatic events, or from the action of the sea and its

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

, morpho-sedimentological units bear witness to an extraordinary structural organization of the natural space. Other important geological features in the vicinity of Havre-Saint-Pierre include the

Romaine River The Romaine River (), known also as the Kanatuahkuiau, Uanaman Hipu, and Uepatauekat Shipu, is a river in eastern Canada. It flows from north to south, emptying into the Jacques Cartier Strait in the municipality of Havre-Saint-Pierre. The Roma ...

to the north west, Manitou Falls on the Manitou River to the west, Île du Havre to the south, less than 1 km from the coast, and off the coast, Anticosti Island which can be seen on a clear day.

Biogeography

Flora

Conrad Kirouac avec chardon de Mingan en 1928

With the exception of the enclosed area just behind the village, the area of Havre Saint-Pierre is mainly covered by large

Spruce A spruce is a tree of the genus ''Picea'' ( ), a genus of about 40 species of coniferous evergreen trees in the family Pinaceae, found in the northern temperate and boreal ecosystem, boreal (taiga) regions of the Northern hemisphere. ''Picea'' ...

forests and a few laricinin fields (

Larix laricina ''Larix laricina'', commonly known as the tamarack, hackmatack, eastern larch, black larch, red larch, or American larch, is a species of larch native to Canada, from eastern Yukon and Inuvik, Northwest Territories east to Newfoundland, and als ...

(Du Roi) K. Koch). There are also

White spruce White spruce is a common name for several species of spruce (''Picea'') and may refer to: * '' Picea engelmannii'', native to the Rocky Mountains and Cascade Mountains of the United States and Canada * ''Picea glauca ''Picea glauca'', the whi ...

(Picea glauca (Moench) Voss.), Dwarf birch (Betula glandulosa Minchx), Rough alder (Alnus rugosa (DuRoi Spreng.) and Trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides Michaux). Brothers Marie-Victorin and Rolland Germain F.E.C. explored the region from 1924 to 1928. Their work has raised awareness in the scientific community of the enormous value of the Mingan Archipelago. Since then, other

scientists A scientist is a person who researches to advance knowledge in an area of the natural sciences. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engaged in the philosophical study of nature ...

have added to the

ecology Ecology () is the natural science of the relationships among living organisms and their Natural environment, environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community (ecology), community, ecosystem, and biosphere lev ...

and

phytogeography Phytogeography (from Greek φυτόν, ''phytón'' = "plant" and γεωγραφία, ''geographía'' = "geography" meaning also distribution) or botanical geography is the branch of biogeography that is concerned with the geographic distribution ...

knowledge of this sector. The vegetation of the Mingan Islands belongs to the Chibougamau-Natashquan boreal forest region, which is dominated by

Black spruce ''Picea mariana'', the black spruce, is a North American species of spruce tree in the pine family. It is widespread across Canada, found in all 10 provinces and all 3 territories. It is the official tree of Newfoundland and Labrador and is tha ...

. The high latitude and low altitude, combined with the proximity of the cold currents of

Labrador Labrador () is a geographic and cultural region within the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is the primarily continental portion of the province and constitutes 71% of the province's area but is home to only 6% of its populatio ...

, explain the

subarctic The subarctic zone is a region in the Northern Hemisphere immediately south of the true Arctic, north of hemiboreal regions and covering much of Alaska, Canada, Iceland, the north of Fennoscandia, Northwestern Russia, Siberia, and the Cair ...

vegetation specific to the Minganie. The entirely

calcareous Calcareous () is an adjective meaning "mostly or partly composed of calcium carbonate", in other words, containing lime (mineral), lime or being chalky. The term is used in a wide variety of Science, scientific disciplines. In zoology ''Calcare ...

nature of the horizontal stratified rocks, which make up the Anticosti - Minganie, exerts a profound influence on the structure of the flora and on the choice of species. Remarkable for its richness, the flora includes 350

vascular plants Vascular plants (), also called tracheophytes (, ) or collectively tracheophyta (; ), are plants that have lignified tissues (the xylem) for conducting water and minerals throughout the plant. They also have a specialized non-lignified tissue ( ...

including the presence of two rare taxa: Cirsium foliosum var. Minganense and Cypripedium passerinum var. Minganense. Sixty species are new to the list of Minganie harvests compiled by Marie-Victorin and Rolland-Germain (1969). There were also 150

bryophytes Bryophytes () are a group of land plants ( embryophytes), sometimes treated as a taxonomic division referred to as Bryophyta '' sensu lato'', that contains three groups of non-vascular land plants: the liverworts, hornworts, and mosses. In t ...

and 152

lichens A lichen ( , ) is a hybrid colony (biology), colony of algae or cyanobacteria living symbiotically among hypha, filaments of multiple fungus species, along with yeasts and bacteria embedded in the cortex or "skin", in a mutualism (biology), m ...

, 29 of which were additions to the Nouveau Catalogue des lichens, published by Lepage (1972). Biological Biology is the scientific study of life and living organisms. It is a broad natural science that encompasses a wide range of fields and unifying principles that explain the structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, and distribution of ...

History

Geography

Geology

Biogeography

Flora

Fauna

=Terrestrial mammals

=Marine mammals

=Birds

Climate

Demography

Population

Language

Economy

Tourism

Fishing

Transportation

Route 138

Land - Air - Sea

Navigation

Notable residents

See also

References

External links