Île d'Orléans

Île d'Orléans, a large island in the Saint Lawrence River just east of Quebec City, has been inhabited since long before French settlement and was known to Indigenous peoples as Minigo, or “Enchantress.” Visited by Jacques Cartier in 1535, it became one of the earliest French-colonized parts of Quebec, where fertile land was organized into seigneurial farms whose long narrow fields still shape the landscape. Sainte-Famille, founded in 1661, was its first parish, and by 1685 the population exceeded 1,200. The island later figured in the history of New France and the British conquest, developed maritime industries alongside farming, and remains known for its agriculture, rural character, and extensive heritage buildings.

Quebec · Canada