page_title: Saint-Charles River (Quebec City)
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Saint-Charles River (Quebec City) / History
caption_attribution_description: Renaturalisation des berges de la Saint-Charles à Québec, Québec
context_page_description: The Saint-Charles River is the main watercourse crossing the city of Quebec, in the administrative region from Capitale-Nationale, in the province of Quebec, in Canada.
  The surface of the Saint-Charles River is generally frozen from the beginning of December to the end of March; however, safe circulation on the ice is generally done from the end of December to the beginning of March. The water level of the river varies with the seasons and the precipitation; the spring flood occurs in March or April.
context_section_description: The estuary of Saint-Charles River in Saint-Lawrence River has a special historical significance since it is at this location that was built the Saint-Lawrence Iroquoian village of Stadaconé and that Jacques Cartier spent his first winter on Canadian soil in 1535–36. The river was first named Petite Rivière or Rivière Sainte-Croix by Jacques Cartier since he came there on the day of the feast of the Cross. This name was also given to the first fort established by the French in this location. Its current name was chosen between 1615 and 1625 by the Récollets missionaries who built a mission there, in honor of their protector Charles de Boves, vicar general of the diocese of Rouen. The protection of Saint Charles Borromeo is also invoqued.
  The southern part of the river's shores, near the estuary, was the site of the construction of industries during the 1960s (who used it as an open sewer) and that was girdled in concrete in the 1970s in order to regulate its flow. At this time, the river was among the most polluted (in great part due to the city's sewage system overflow) in Québec by its microbian pollution and its recreational use near the estuary was impossible. Since the mid-1990s, community and governmental efforts allowed an important renaturalisation project to take place, for over 100 million Canadian dollars.
  Quebec City counts in 2008 160 overflow canals allowing municipal sewage to pour into the river without treatment during periods of network congestion, specially following heavy rain. Québec's regulations allow four overflows by year, a norm that was exceeded for eleven valves along the Saint-Charles. The number of overflows was however much greater before 2002 and reached up to 50 per summer. Between 2002 and 2006, during the renaturalisation works, 14 retention reservoirs of great size were built, but investments ranging between 2 and 6 million dollars will still be required to alleviate the problem, in part blamed on old constructions where the gutters are directly connected to the city's sanitary installations.
  Since 1979, the non-profit oriented organisation Fishing in town releases brook trout young into the river in order to facilitate its access to fishermen, specially young fishers. In 2008, 25 000 trouts were planted, for a sum of  700 000 since the organisation's foundation.
caption: Shores renaturalisation at Limoilou (2006)
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