More than 400 years ago, on a day like this on 3 1608, Samuel de Champlain founded one of the oldest European settlements in Canada, the province of Quebec. This province is very popular for its historic center, which looks like an authentic copy of an 18th-century French walled enclosure; and it was also declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1985.
Before the arrival of the French explorer Samuel Champlain to these lands, Quebec was nothing more than a practically abandoned ferret town named Stadaconé, after discovering it; Champlain called it Kebék, which in the Iroquois language (a group of indigenous languages spoken by the first indigenous people of North America) means where the river narrows since it is located on the banks of the San Lorenzo River around a hill.
Later, Quebec became the heart of New France due to the English invasion of 1629, the English held this town captive until 1632. In the following years, Quebec would become the scene of a fierce fight between the British and French. However, everything would change drastically with the arrival of the British general James Wolfe to America, this would trigger a bloody battle that took place on September 13th, 1759, before the city walls that lasted just thirty minutes and was called the Battle of the Plains Abraham. This defeat marked the end of the French presence in Quebec and was ceded in its entirety to Great Britain with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1763.
Quebec City was the capital of Canada from 1859 to 1865. However, after the formation of the Province of Canada, the capital was successively transferred to Kingston and Montreal, to finally be transferred to Ottawa with the creation of the Dominion of Canada, in 1867. Before being declared the capital of Canada, the Quebec Conference was held in 1844, one of the conferences where a series of conversations were discussed that led to the promulgation of the British North America Act and the creation of the Confederation of Canada in 1867.
In April 2001, Quebec City hosted the Summit of the Americas to discuss the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Likewise, it was the scene of massive demonstrations against globalization, which were caused by the decision to install a wall around a large portion of the historic city with a four-meter-high fenced fence during the said summit.