You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in French. (December 2018) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
View a machine-translated version of the French article.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing French Wikipedia article at [[:fr:Cap-Santé]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template {{Translated|fr|Cap-Santé}} to the talk page.
The name of the town means "Cape Health". Cap-Santé is on the northern bank of the Saint Lawrence River, 40 kilometres (25 mi) west of Quebec City. Legend has it that this community's name was coined when soldiers suffering from an unknown disease miraculously recovered from a cure discovered in the village.
The old settlement is situated just west of the nearby Jacques-Cartier River and on the embankment of the Saint Lawrence River.
History
The first settlers arrived around 1679, and in 1714 the village became an official parish.
The present-day church, a historical-registered building, was built from 1754 to 1767. Interrupted during construction by the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), it is one of the last buildings to be constructed under the French regime. The church has a facade and two towers, a baroque interior, a neoclassicalreredos, and two tiers of openings on the bell tower, a presbytery (designed by architect Charles Baillargé in 1849) featuring five neatly lined dormer windows. A cemetery encircles the square, leading to the river below.
The Place de l'Église square is crowned with old wells dating back to 1799. Vieux Chemin street was built along the same geographical line as that Chemin-du-Roy, the first road linking Montreal and Quebec City in the 18th century. Wooden and stone homes dot the narrow and shaded street that borders the cape. The quay is on the Saint Lawrence River.
In 1759 following the defeat of the French at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham during the Seven Years' War, the commander of the French forces, Chevalier de Lévis, ordered the construction of Fort Jacques-Cartier at the mouth of the Jacques-Cartier River[4] from materials originally destined for the construction of a church. The following year, using the fort as a logistics base, Lévis attempted unsuccessfully with 7,000 men to recapture Quebec City from the British. The British captured the fort in September 1760 and kept a garrison there until 1763 after which they abandoned it. Virtually nothing remains of the fort aside from archaeological remains,[4] which is also situated on private land inaccessible to the public on the 'Plateau Jacques-Cartier' district of the municipality. Close by, is the Allsopp House (late 18th century), an old seigneurial manor named after the Allsopp family, now a private property registered as a historical building.
The founder of the Congregation of the Sisters of Bon Pasteur, Marie Fitzbach, lived in Cap-Santé from 1826–1840. Gérard Morisset, architect and art historian, was also a resident, and designed the interiors of many of the region's churches.
In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Cap-Santé had a population of 3,594 living in 1,509 of its 1,589 total private dwellings, a change of 5.4% from its 2016 population of 3,410. With a land area of 54.49 km2 (21.04 sq mi), it had a population density of 66.0/km2 (170.8/sq mi) in 2021.[6]