Le quai et la Villégiature / The Quay and Village Life

In the nineteenth century, quays were built all along the south shore to serve maritime transport, including a quay at Berthier-sur-Mer in 1853, and several regional quays had waiting rooms and storage areas where residents and merchants collected goods. Along with schooners carrying freight, steamboats served south shore villages from Lotbinière County to Montmagny, carrying farmers and villagers between communities and across to the Quebec City market. These quays became busy centers of business and pleasure, where arrivals and departures brought reunions, exchanges of goods and information, and gossip, while barbers, general stores, and many hotels served travelers. In the late nineteenth century, the arrival of steamboats encouraged tourism in Berthier-sur-Mer, first as a largely Anglo-Saxon practice linked to navigation and then increasingly among the French Canadian bourgeoisie. The popularity of beaches and swimming led to small hotels for summer visitors, including the Labadie, Tourism, and Vimy hotels. The river's south shore soon became a popular resort area for people from Quebec City, with second homes appearing by the mid-nineteenth century at the foot of cliffs, in coves, and along the shore; a century later, almost all of the region's bays and coves were used by vacationers. After the Second World War, cottage building saw its greatest growth, and improved roads in the 1930s and 1940s made rural municipalities easier to reach, helping some bays, including at Berthier-sur-Mer, become small seasonal communities.

Quebec · Canada