Péribonka is a municipality in the

Canadian province Canada has ten provinces and three territories that are sub-national administrative divisions under the jurisdiction of the Constitution of Canada, Canadian Constitution. In the 1867 Canadian Confederation, three provinces of British North Amer ...

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, ...

, located in the

Maria-Chapdelaine Regional County Municipality Maria-Chapdelaine is a regional county municipality in the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean region of Quebec, Canada. Its seat is in Dolbeau-Mistassini. It runs from Lac Saint-Jean in the south to the deep interior of northern Quebec in the north. S ...

. It is situated at the mouth of the

Peribonka River The Peribonka River (French: ''Rivière Péribonka'') is a river emptying in Sainte-Monique, in Lac-Saint-Jean-Est Regional County Municipality, in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean area in Quebec, Canada. It is long and drains an area of . It drains ...

where it forms a bay on the north shore of

Lac Saint-Jean Lac Saint-Jean (, ) is a large, relatively shallow lake in south-central Quebec, Canada, in the Laurentian Highlands. It is situated north of the Saint Lawrence River, into which it drains via the Saguenay River. It covers an area of , and is ...

Louis Hémon Louis Hémon (12 October 1880 – 8 July 1913), was a French writer, best known for his novel '' Maria Chapdelaine''. Biography Louis Hémon was born in Brest, France. In Paris, where he resided with his family, he was enrolled in the Mont ...

(1880-1913), a French writer, spent several months in Péribonka in 1912 during which he prepared the notes for his famous novel, ''

Maria Chapdelaine ''Maria Chapdelaine'' is a romance novel written in 1913 by the Breton writer Louis Hémon, who was then residing in Quebec.Guy Laflèche. Polémiques'. Editions du Singulier; 1992. . p. 126 – 128. Aimed at young French and Quebecois people ...

''. Peribonka comes from the

Innu The Innu/Ilnu ('man, person'), formerly called Montagnais (French for ' mountain people'; ), are the Indigenous Canadians who inhabit northeastern Labrador in present-day Newfoundland and Labrador and some portions of Quebec. They refer to ...

word ''periwanga'' (or possibly from ''pelipaukau''), meaning "river digging in/removing the sand", from the roots ''per'' or ''pen'', "to remove", and ''anga'', meaning "sand".

History

In 1673, Jesuits François de Crespieul and

Charles Albanel Charles Albanel (; 1616 – 11 January 1696), born in Ardes or Auvergne, was a French missionary explorer in Canada, and a Jesuit priest. He was the first to travel by land to Hudson Bay from Tadoussac. Life Charles Albanel entered the Society ...

visited the place. But a village did not form until 1888 when the families of Édouard Niquet (or Niquette) and Édouard Milot arrived. Niquet had been sent there by

Antoine Labelle François-Xavier-Antoine Labelle (; November 24, 1833 – January 4, 1891) was a Roman Catholic priest and the person principally responsible for the settlement (or "colonization") of the Laurentians. He is also referred to as "Curé Labelle" ...

, then Deputy Minister of Colonization of Quebec. A significant impetus to colonization came in 1897 with the founding of the Colonization and Repatriation Society of Quebec and Lac Saint-Jean, organization that encouraged the establishment of settlers and the repatriation of French-Canadian families exiled in the United States. The Peribonka Post Office opened in 1898. Amédée Robitaille established the Peribonka Pulp Company which led to the founding of the municipality of Saint-Amédée in 1902. The following year, the Parish of Saint-Édouard-de-Peribonka was formed and named after Édouard Niquet and the adjacent river, that first got its name back in 1679. In 1909, the Municipality of Péribonka was founded by separating a portion of Saint-Amédée's territory. But in 1926, Saint-Amédée was completely annexed by Péribonka.

Demographics

Population trend:Statistics Canada:

1996 1996 was designated as: * International Year for the Eradication of Poverty Events January * January 8 – A Zairean cargo plane crashes into a crowded market in the center of the capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo ...

2001 The year's most prominent event was the September 11 attacks against the United States by al-Qaeda, which Casualties of the September 11 attacks, killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror. The United States led a Participan ...

2006 2006 was designated as the International Year of Deserts and Desertification. Events January * January 1– 4 – Russia temporarily cuts shipment of natural gas to Ukraine during a price dispute. * January 12 – A stampede during t ...

2011 The year marked the start of a Arab Spring, series of protests and revolutions throughout the Arab world advocating for democracy, reform, and economic recovery, later leading to the depositions of world leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen ...

2016 2016 was designated as: * International Year of Pulses by the sixty-eighth session of the United Nations General Assembly. * International Year of Global Understanding (IYGU) by the International Council for Science (ICSU), the Internationa ...

2021 Like the year 2020, 2021 was also heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, due to the emergence of multiple Variants of SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 variants. The major global rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, which began at the end of 2020, continued ...

census * Population in 2021: 489 (2016 to 2021 population change: -5%) * Population in 2016: 515 * Population in 2011: 464 * Population in 2006: 541 * Population in 2001: 538 * Population in 1996: 588 * Population in 1991: 635 * Population in 1986: 650 * Population in 1981: 675 * Population in 1976: 633 * Population in 1971: 780 * Population in 1966: 794 * Population in 1961: 891 * Population in 1956: 894 * Population in 1951: 862 * Population in 1941: 674 * Population in 1931: 769 * Population in 1921: 889 * Population in 1911: 401 Private dwellings occupied by usual residents: 234 (total dwellings: 304) Mother tongue: * English as first language: 0% * French as first language: 99.0% * English and French as first language: 1.0% * Other as first language: 0%

Notable people

(author of Maria Chapdelaine) *

Michel Goulet Michel Bernard Goulet (born April 21, 1960) is a Canadian former professional forward (ice hockey), ice hockey forward who played for the Birmingham Bulls (WHA), Birmingham Bulls in the World Hockey Association and the Quebec Nordiques and Chicag ...

(professional ice hockey player and

NHL The National Hockey League (NHL; , ''LNH'') is a professional ice hockey league in North America composed of 32 teams25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. The NHL is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Cana ...

Hall of Fame inductee)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Peribonka, Quebec Municipalities in Quebec Incorporated places in Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean Maria-Chapdelaine Regional County Municipality