QUEBEC CITY TRANSPORTATION |
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Quebec City is the oldest extant European settlement in Canada. It was
founded by Samuel de Champlain in 1608 on the site of a First Nations
settlement called Stadacona. It was to this settlement that the name Canada
refers (kanata is an Iroquoian word meaning "village").
Quebec City was captured by the British in 1629 and held until 1632.
As mentioned above, this city was the site of the Battle of the Plains of
Abraham during the Seven Years War, in which British troops under General
James Wolfe defeated the French general Louis-Joseph de Montcalm and took
the city. France later ceded New France to Britain. |
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During the American Revolution, the British garrison at Quebec City was
assaulted by American troops in the Battle of Quebec. The defeat of the
Americans put an end to their hopes that Canada would also rebel.
Quebec City was capital of Canada from 1859 to 1865, the last before Ottawa.
The Quebec Conference on Canadian Confederation was held here.
In World War II two conferences were held in Quebec City. The first one was
held in 1943 with Franklin Delano Roosevelt (United States' president),
Winston Churchill (United Kingdom's prime minister), Mackenzie King (Canada's
prime minister) and T.V. Soong. (China's minister of foreign affairs). The
second one was held in 1944 and was attended by Churchill and Roosevelt.
They took place in the buildings of the Citadelle and of nearby Chateau
Frontenac.
In April 2001, Quebec City hosted the Summit of the Americas to discuss the
Free Trade Area of the Americas; it also hosted massive anti-globalization
demonstrations, provoked both by the summit and by the decision to wall off
a large portion of the historic city with a four-metre-high chain-link fence
for the duration. Police forces were widely accused of excessive use of
force during the demonstrations.
On January 1, 2002, Quebec City and 12 other municipalities of the
Communauté urbaine de Québec were merged into to the new Quebec City
"megacity," |
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