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

city A city is a human settlement of a substantial size. The term "city" has different meanings around the world and in some places the settlement can be very small. Even where the term is limited to larger settlements, there is no universally agree ...

on the south shore of the

Saint Lawrence River The St. Lawrence River (, ) is a large international river in the middle latitudes of North America connecting the Great Lakes to the North Atlantic Ocean. Its waters flow in a northeasterly direction from Lake Ontario to the Gulf of St. Lawrenc ...

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, ...

. 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, ot ...

and the

judicial district A judicial district or legal district denotes the territorial area for which a legal court (usually a district court) has jurisdiction. By continent Europe Austria In texts concerning Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Aus ...

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 stream of fresh water that flows on land or inside Subterranean river, caves towards another body of water at a lower elevation, such as an ocean, lake, or another river. A river may run dry before reaching the end of ...

, whose name means ''Wolf's River'' in French. This name may have come from a native tribe known as "Les Loups" ("The Wolves") or from the many seals, 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 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 radiation poisoning, lethal effect ...

. A

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Air force, air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its ori ...

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 conducted by

Statistics Canada Statistics Canada (StatCan; ), 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 culture. It is headquartered in ...

, 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.

Arts and 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 #REDIRECT ICI {{redirect category shell, {{R from other capitalisation{{R from ambiguous page ...

, January 16, 2013.

Infrastructure

Rivière-du-Loup is a traditional stopping point between

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 ...

, 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 ...

and the

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

. The

Trans-Canada Highway The Trans-Canada Highway (Canadian French, 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 A ...

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. Established in 1850, it had a population of 16,437 as of 2021. On January 1, 2023, Edmundston amalgamated with the village of Rivière-Verte, New Brunswick, Rivière-Verte and ...

New Brunswick New Brunswick is a Provinces and Territories of Canada, province of Canada, bordering Quebec to the north, Nova Scotia to the east, the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to the northeast, the Bay of Fundy to the southeast, and the U.S. state of Maine to ...

. There is a

ferry A ferry is a boat or ship that transports passengers, and occasionally vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A small passenger ferry with multiple stops, like those in Venice, Italy, is sometimes referred to as a water taxi or water bus ...

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 (

IATA airport code An IATA airport code, also known as an IATA location identifier, IATA station code, or simply a location identifier, is a unique three-letter geocode designating many airports, cities (with one or more airports) and metropolitan areas (citie ...

YRI). The town can also be reached by

Via Rail Via Rail Canada Inc. (), operating as Via Rail or Via (stylized as VIA Rail), is a Canadian Crown corporation that operates intercity passenger rail service in Canada. As of December 2023, Via Rail operates 406 trains per week across eight ...

on the train named The Ocean, between

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 ...

and Halifax.

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 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 Limited ("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 T ...

. 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 (; ), branded as () (formerly known as ), is a Canadian French-language public educational television network in the province of Quebec. It is a provincial Crown corporation owned by the Government of Quebec. The network's main studios an ...

outlet, though Rimouski's CIVB-DT is available on the

Vidéotron Vidéotron is a Canadian integrated telecommunications company founded in 1964. It's active in cable television, interactive multimedia development, video on demand, cable telephony, wireless communication and Internet access services. Owned by Qu ...

system in Rivière-du-Loup. Following the closedown of CKRT-DT, Radio-Canada would be seen on Vidéotron from CJBR-DT Rimouski.

Radio

* FM 89.5 - CJBR-FM-1,

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

* FM 90.7 - CBRX-FM-3,

Ici Musique Ici Musique (stylized ICI Musique) is the French-language music radio service of Canada's national public broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (''Société Radio-Canada''). It is the French equivalent of the English CBC Music, altho ...

* FM 103.7 - CIEL-FM, AC * FM 107.1 - CIBM-FM, CHR * FM 107.9 - CIBM-FM-1 (local CIBM rebroadcaster)

Notable people

Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada's first prime minister, had a summer home in Rivière-du-Loup. People born there include: * Danielle April, artist * Joseph Jean Benoit, 31st Canadian

Surgeon General Surgeon general (: surgeons general) is a title used in several Commonwealth countries and most NATO nations to refer either to a senior military medical officer or to a senior uniformed physician commissioned by the government and entrusted with p ...

* Nicolas Dickner, writer *Dr. John McLoughlin, known as "the father of

Oregon Oregon ( , ) is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is a part of the Western U.S., with the Columbia River delineating much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while t ...

" * Louis-Philippe Picard, member of the

House of Commons of Canada The House of Commons of Canada () is the lower house of the Parliament of Canada. Together with the Monarchy of Canada#Parliament (King-in-Parliament), Crown and the Senate of Canada, they comprise the Bicameralism, bicameral legislature of Ca ...

* Maurice Arthur Pope, soldier and diplomat * Alex Belzile, professional hockey player * Allan Sirois, professional hockey player * Alexandre-Antonin Taché, 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