With colorful festivals, rambling streets and a cliff-top setting overlooking the St Lawrence River, North America’s oldest French-speaking city is a gorgeous, seductive place.
Quebecers, like Montrealers, grow up studying English, but because the Anglophone minority in Québec is so tiny, they rarely use it outside the major tourist areas. Most city residents are fully bilingual, but if you stray into the surrounding countryside, you will quickly find that French is the province’s official language.
Today more than 95 percent of Quebec City residents speak French, with a third of the population speaking both English and French.
Most of the economy is based on transportation, tourism, the service sector and defence. A large portion of the city’s jobs are also through the provincial government since it is the capital city. The main industrial products from Quebec City are pulp and paper, food, metal and wood items, chemicals and electronics