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Saguenay River

Major tributary of the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, Canada

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A photo of the river showing the two sides and a motorboat powering away. The shot was taken from Cap Trinité.
TheAnarcat · CC BY-SA 4.0

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The river has a very high flow-rate and is bordered by steep cliffs associated with the Saguenay Graben. Tide waters flow in its fjord upriver as far as Chicoutimi (about 100 kilometres). Many beluga whales breed in the cold waters at its mouth, which makes Tadoussac a popular site for whale watching and sea kayaking, and Greenland sharks also frequent the depths of the river. The area of the confluence of the Saguenay and Saint Lawrence is protected by the Saguenay–St. Lawrence Marine Park, one of Canada's national parks.

History

First Nations people, including Innus, have inhabited the Saguenay Fjord area for thousands of years prior to the arrvival of the first Europeans. The first European to visit the area was Jacques Cartier, in 1535. After Samuel de Champlain established a fort in 1608 on the northern shores of the St. Lawrence River around present-day Quebec City, various Indigenous peoples, including Innu, Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), Huron, Algonquins, and Cree, traded along the Saguenay River. They named the river for the legendary Kingdom of Saguenay, which is the namesake of Saguenay Herald of the Canadian Heraldic Authority.

In the 19th century, the river was begun to be used for transport and power by the logging and pulp and paper industries. A dam on the upper Saguenay generates hydroelectricity for local industries such as aluminum smelting and paper mills.

Severe flooding of the Saguenay's tributary rivers devastated the region in one of Canada's costliest natural disasters, the Saguenay Flood from July 18 to 21, 1996. However, an unexpected effect of the flood was to cover the heavily-contaminated sediments at the bottom of the river with 10 to 50 centimetres (3.9 to 19.7 in) of new, relatively clean sediments. Research has shown that the old sediments are no longer a threat to ecosystems.

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