Quebec

Climate

There are four distinct seasons in Québec—spring, summer, fall and winter offering a wonderful view of the nature and variety of activities.

Summer end of June to end of August: Summers in Québec are hot but the season offers many festivals and outdoor activities.

Fall September to end of October: The leaves change color in Québec, creating breathtakingly colorful landscapes.

Winter November to end of March: Québec’s extremely low temperatures and abundance of snowfall makes skiing, snowboarding, tobogganing, snowmobiling and dogsledding possible. In December, Québec’s vast outdoors turns into a snow-covered white dreamland. February marks the maple syrup festivities in the sugar shacks, as the maple trees awaken from the winter cold and prepare for the forthcoming springtime.

Spring April to end of June: While April may still be relatively cold at times and another large snowfall can occur, April feels like winter is at, long last, over. As May approaches, nature awakens, trees start to bloom and the air warms, welcoming everybody to a magnificent, colorful outdoor scenery.

Understand

Québec was a French colony for more than two centuries, between the arrival of Jacques Cartier in 1534 and Governor Vaudreuil’s capitulation to the English in 1760.

It is the only province in Canada where French is the sole official language, and it is one of the rare former French colonies in North America where French is still spoken.

Québec is Canada’s second most populous province. It has 8 million inhabitants, including 6.4 million approx. 80% whose mother tongue is French.

French is the mother tongue of 82% of Quebecers, and English is the mother tongue of 10% of the population. The remaining 8% is divided among some 30 languages such as, in order of importance, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese and Greek. However, it is very easy to travel in Québec speaking only English, especially in Montreal, and to a lesser extent, Quebec City. In fact, over 40% of the population is bilingual. In major cities like Montréal, this percentage is as high as 64%, and 16% of the population speaks a third language.

The majority of the population lives in the vicinity of the St. Lawrence River, in the southern portion of the province. The population is largely urbanized; close to 50% of Quebecers live in the metropolitan area of Montréal.