Seigneurie de la Côte-de-Beaupré, Seigneurial estate in La Côte-de-Beaupré, Capitale-Nationale, Canada
Seigneurie de la Côte-de-Beaupré is a historic manorial estate in the Lac-Jacques-Cartier area that stretches as a strip along the Saint Lawrence River between Stoneham and Gouffre River. Its territory extends across the Laurentian Mountains and encompasses portions of ten municipalities.
Created on 15 January 1636 by the Compagnie de la Nouvelle-France in Paris, the seigneurie originally included Île d'Orléans. Between 1662 and 1668 François de Montmorency-Laval, apostolic vicar of New France, bought out the associate owners' shares; in 1675 he traded Île d'Orléans for Île Jésus, and on 8 April 1680 he gave the seigneurie to the Séminaire de Québec.
The estate's name survives in the nickname Terres du Séminaire, still used for the Seminary of Quebec's land. Under Laval's system, Côte-de-Beaupré parishes owed a tithe to the Seminary; Bishop de Saint-Vallier later freed the parish priests of that obligation. The Seminary gradually sold off farms and villages, keeping the northern woods.
Access to the territory is granted by the Séminaire de Québec, which issues rights to about 200 hunting and fishing clubs as well as to some organizations and vacation operators. The land is working forest and wind-farm country, so visitors generally pass through on logging roads rather than at a single entrance.
The seigneurie's 1,592 km2 make it larger than 55 of the world's states, and its highest ground is Mont Raoul-Blanchard at 1,181 m, north of Saint-Tite-des-Caps and Petite-Rivière-Saint-François. Since 2005 the Boralex/Gaz Métro consortium has run two wind farms there with a combined capacity of 272 MW.
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