Description of Historic Place
The Fortifications of Québec National Historic Site of Canada comprises a number of sites associated with the city of Québec’s historic defence systems. Its components are located in the city’s Upper Town and Lower Town, along the north shore of the St. Lawrence River to the Montmorency River in Beauport and on the south shore of Lévis. The site includes the actual fortifications and certain components, such as doors, guard posts, powder magazines, storehouses, barracks, and military facilities, all built between 1608 and 1871, which contribute to the city’s defence system. Official recognition refers to all of the associated physical, built, archaeological and landscape resources within the defined perimeter that are linked to the defence system, namely the mill’s redoubt and Mont-Carmel Park, the Esplanade powder magazine, the powder magazine located on the property of the Hôtel-Dieu Hospital, the Artillery barracks, the sections of the Artillery Park Heritage Site declared surplus by the Dominion Arsenal, the captain’s quarters in the Artillery Park Heritage Site, the ordnance storehouse in the Saint-Jean bastion, the Dauphine barracks, the Québec Martello Towers National Historic Site of Canada (NHSC), the Québec Garrison Club NHSC, the Québec Citadelle NHSC, and the Lévis Forts NHSC.
The Fortifications of Québec were designated a national historic site of Canada in 1957 because:
- they commemorate the defence system built between 1608 and 1871 in Quebec City, Canada’s main stronghold in the colonial era.
Located on a plateau overlooking the convergence of the St. Lawrence and the St. Charles Rivers, the fortifications for the city of Québec began with the city’s founding in 1608 by Samuel de Champlain. The original fortifications were makeshift works, built to meet the colony’s most pressing needs. Resembling a medieval castle, Champlain’s first fort, or Habitation, included a residence, merchandise and supply store, and a redoubt with elevated walls. Throughout the 17th century, this first habitation was replaced by a succession of rudimentary military works, including Fort St. Louis and Champlain’s second Habitation. In 1690, the fall of Port Royal in Acadia led the French to properly fortify the city with its first enceinte, consisting of 11 redoubts joined by palisades. Although the Upper Town’s steep cliffs acted as natural defences for two of its three sides, its vulnerable west side, which faced the open countryside of the Plains of Abraham, was made the top priority of Québec’s fortification program. The initial enceinte was followed by a succession of modifications and additions until 1745 when, after the fall of Louisbourg to the British triggered a state of panic among Québec’s inhabitants, a new enceinte laden with masonry was built, permanently enclosing the Upper Town’s western boundary.
Shortly after the conquest of Canada in 1759, the British victors were faced with new defense requirements. Though the British feared an attempt by the French to recapture Québec, as well as an uprising from the Francophone population, they could not raise the funds to strengthen the city’s defences right away. However, the Revolutionary War in America eventually spurred the construction of new fortifications. The British undertook a plan to strengthen and extend the 1745 enceinte around the entire city, build outworks in front of the enceinte to hamper the enemy’s approach, build defense works on the Plains of Abraham, and erect a masonry citadel on Cap Diamant. This last phase was completed between 1819 and 1832. Incorporating existing 18th-century defence systems in its design, the Citadel’s only real new fronts were those that faced the city, indicating that it was built, in part, to function as a British refuge in the event of a Francophone uprising. The completion of the Citadel marked the height of the city of Québec’s role as a fortress.
The construction of detached forts on the south shore in Lévis in 1865 was followed by the departure of the British garrison in 1871. Although several structures of the fortifications have deteriorated or were demolished since then, the primary defences of the city have been preserved due to the late 19th-century intervention of Governor General of Canada Lord Dufferin (1872-1878). Today, the city of Québec is the sole surviving example of a fortified city in North America.
Sources: Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, Minutes, 1948, December 2000, June 2001; Statement of Commemorative Integrity, 2004.
Elements key to the heritage value of this site include:
- its location in the city of Québec, overlooking the St. Lawrence and St. Charles Rivers;
- its strategic subdivision into sectors related to specific defensive goals;
- the many and varied components of each sector (walls, glacis, trenches, Martello Towers, ramparts and bastions) and their locations, designs, forms and materials;
- the seamless incorporation of components with the natural topography of the site;
- the high degree to which the components reflect the principles of 18th- and 19th-century military design, particularly that of fortifications;
- its well-integrated components according to function and space;
- the integrity of the original location, design, form, craftsmanship, and materials of each individual building;
- the preponderance of wood, lime, and green sandstone from Sillery as construction materials;
- the clarity of the functional role and footprint of each sector and its components;
- the continued association of the site with archaeological objects removed for research purposes;
- the continued association of found military objects on the site with built components related to their use;
- the integrity of all archaeological evidence related to the configuration of historical defence systems;
- the integrity of archaeological evidence related to past use and/or past life on the site;
- the original elements of each component;
- the integrity of the spatial characteristics and strategic relationships that constitute the assembly of each military sector of the site and its individual components;
- the integrity of the original strategic perspectives associated to some components, between components, and among the components of a defence sector, and between and among the sectors of the site;
- the legibility of both historic circulation systems.