Quebec Geography

The St. Lawrence River is Quebec's defining geographic feature, running the length of the settled south of the province and historically shaping where its cities and towns were built -- Montreal, Quebec City, and Trois-Rivières all sit directly on it.

North of the river, the Canadian Shield covers roughly two-thirds of the province -- a vast expanse of exposed bedrock, boreal forest, and lakes that becomes progressively more remote and sparsely populated moving north toward Hudson Bay and Ungava Bay.

The Laurentian Mountains, an ancient and heavily eroded range north of Montreal, hold the province's main ski country, including resort towns like Mont-Tremblant.

East of Quebec City, the Charlevoix region's dramatic coastal terrain gives way to the Gaspé Peninsula, which juts into the Gulf of St. Lawrence and ends at the sea stack of Percé Rock.