Book Description

In this richly documented work, Serge Courville tells the geographical history of Quebec, from the appearance of the first human groups through to the present day. This detailed and erudite book maps the major stages of Quebec’s collective development, providing a geographical record of the many social relationships that over time created a sense of place. Landscape, Courville shows, is the keeper of memory, the record of successive changes, and a witness to the genesis of the new. Places that were once agricultural, then left to waste and ruin, are today revivified by tourism. Areas that now house office buildings were long ago open playgrounds where children ruled. Drawing on vast research, Courville shows how, in spite of the turbulence Quebec often endures – or perhaps because of it – the land itself may be seen as an important participant in the history of its peoples. Quebec: A Historical Geography was originally published by Les Presses de l’Universite Laval as Le Québec: Genèses et mutations du territoire. During his twenty-two years as a professor in the Department of Geography at Université Laval, Serge Courville authored or co-authored some seventeen books, including an ambitious comparative study of colonization and immigration in Canada. Richard Howard has been translating books from the French, chiefly in the social sciences, for over three decades.