The nation of Canada was created by the British North America Act in 1867 with Ontario, Québec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia as the four original provinces. The province of Québec was the heart of New France, the former French empire in North America, from tthe founding of Québec city in 1608 until France was forced to cede its Canadian territories to Britain at the end of the Seven Years War in 1763. Today Canada is a federation of ten provinces and three large federal territories in the far north of the country. Québec is the largest and second most populous of the provinces. It includes both sides of the St. Lawrence River and Estuary from Montréal to the Gulf of St. Lawrence as well as the north shore of the Gulf; it also extends far to the north with long coastlines on Hudson Bay and Hudson Strait. Its population, more than 8 million, is concentrated in the valley of the St. Lawrence. The province once had at least 275 lighthouses but only about 80 remain today. A number of historic towers have been carefully restored but lighthouse preservation as a whole has been a little slower to take hold in Québec than in the maritime provinces. This seems to be changing for the better, with reports of several recent preservation and restoration efforts. However, there is no province-wide preservation association. Québec is divided into 17 administrative regions (régions administratives). Outside of the major urban areas Québec is further divided into 86 county-level regional county municipalities (municipalités régionale de comté). This page covers lighthouses of upper Québec: the part of the province north of the St. Lawrence River surrounding the city of Montréal. The St. Lawrence is one of the world's greatest inland waterways: ocean-going ships sail the river to Montréal and many continue on the St. Lawrence Seaway to the Great Lakes. Aids to navigation in Canada are maintained by the Canadian Coast Guard. In 2008 Parliament passed the Heritage Lighthouse Protection Act to designate and protect historic lighthouses. French is the official language of Québec. The French word for a lighthouse, phare, is often reserved for the larger lighthouses; a smaller light or harbor light is called a feu (literally "fire," but here meaning "light"). The front light of a range (alignement) is the feu antérieur and the rear light is the feu postérieur. In French île is an island, cap is a cape, pointe is a promontory or point of land, roche is a rock, récife is a reef, baie is a bay, estuaire is an estuary or inlet, détroit is a strait, rivière is a river, and havre is a harbor. ARLHS numbers are from the ARLHS World List of Lights. CCG numbers are from the Atlantic Coast portion of the List of Lights, Buoys, and Fog Signals of Fisheries and Oceans Canada for lighthouses below Montréal and from the Inland Waters list for lights in and west of Montréal. Admiralty numbers are from Volume H of the Admiralty List of Lights & Fog Signals. U.S. NGA numbers are from Publication 110.
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Lanaudière Region Lighthouses
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![]() Île Dupas Range Front Light, Batiscan photo copyright Michael Boucher; used by permission |
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![]() Île Ronde Range Rear Light, St.-Sulpice, July 2007 Flickr photo copyright Lloyd Gross; used by permission |
Montréal City Lighthouses
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Montérégie Region Lighthouses
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![]() Pointe-au-Foin Downstream Range Front (left) and Rear Lights, Lac Saint-François, 2018 photo copyright Michael Boucher; used by permission |
Ottawa River: Laurentides Region Lighthouses
Ottawa River: Outaouais Region Lighthouses
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Information available on lost lighthouses:
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Notable faux lighthouses:
Adjoining pages: Northeast: Central Québec | Southeast: Southern Québec | Southwest: Southwestern Québec | West: Southeastern Ontario
Return to the Lighthouse Directory index | Ratings key
Posted September 12, 2003. Checked and revised August 14, 2024. Lighthouses: 32. Site copyright 2024 Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.