General · EdgepediaSeptember 17, 20267 min read

Saguenay

Saguenay is a city in the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean region of Quebec, Canada, created on 18 February 2002 by the merger of seven former municipalities and named after the Saguenay River, which crosses its territory before reaching the fjord.¹^•² It is the eighth-largest municipality in Quebec by population, with 151,972 residents in 2025, and it also serves as its own regional county municipality (MRC), holding more than 50 percent of the region's population.³

Key fact	Detail
Creation	Constituted by decree on 18 February 2002 from the cities of Chicoutimi, Jonquière, La Baie and Laterrière, the municipalities of Lac-Kénogami and Shipshaw, and part of the Canton de Tremblay¹
Boroughs	Three boroughs: Chicoutimi, Jonquière and La Baie⁴
Population	151,972 in 2025, ranked 8th among Quebec municipalities³
Area	1,263 km² according to the city's 2023–2030 waste management plan; the police service and Promotion Saguenay give 1,165 km²⁴^•⁵
Location	About 200 km north of Quebec City, inland from the St. Lawrence corridor⁴
Economy	Aluminum production and processing, forestry, agri-food, energy, medical research and tourism; the region produces one third of all Canadian aluminum⁶
Historic origin	Fur-trade post established at Chicoutimi on 24 June 1676⁷

Formation of the city

The 2002 merger brought together the cities of Chicoutimi, Jonquière, La Baie and Laterrière, the municipalities of Lac-Kénogami and Shipshaw, and part of the territory of the Canton de Tremblay into a single municipality named Ville de Saguenay.¹ The decree was issued under the Act respecting municipal territorial organization after the Minister of Municipal Affairs required the municipalities to submit a joint amalgamation request in 2001; the minister named Bernard Angers as conciliator, and no joint request arrived within the prescribed deadline.¹ A working group suggested Chicoutimi, Chicoutimi/Jonquière and Saguenay as candidate names, and the government chose Saguenay.⁸

The merger was the second round of municipal consolidation in the Haut-Saguenay. On 1 January 1976, three earlier fusions had formed the cities of Jonquière (from Jonquière, Kénogami, Arvida and the parish of Saint-Dominique-de-Jonquière), Chicoutimi (from Chicoutimi, Chicoutimi-Nord and Rivière-du-Moulin), and La Baie (from Port-Alfred, Bagotville, Grande-Baie and the parish of Bagotville).⁹ The idea of a single city drew on the historical conurbation of Jonquière, Chicoutimi and La Baie.¹⁰

The former names survive as boroughs. Chicoutimi, Jonquière and La Baie are the city's three arrondissements, and their territories correspond to the former municipalities, with the La Baie borough matching the old city's limits exactly.⁴^•¹ Laterrière, Canton Tremblay, Lac-Kénogami and Shipshaw persist as peripheral sectors of these boroughs.¹¹

Territory and population

Saguenay lies in a valley along the Saguenay River, upstream of the Saguenay Fjord and downstream of the Kénogami Horst, within the administrative region 02, Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean.¹¹ Unlike Quebec's main cities, which developed along the St. Lawrence, it sits inland, about 200 km north of Quebec City and less than 500 km northeast of Montreal.⁴

Population estimates by Statistics Canada show steady growth in recent years: 145,402 in 2021, 146,849 in 2022, 148,874 in 2023, 151,309 in 2024, and 151,972 on 1 July 2025.¹² The Institut de la statistique du Québec gives the same 2025 figure and ranks Saguenay 8th among Quebec municipalities.³ In 2005, shortly after the merger, the city counted about 147,197 inhabitants, with 67,739 in Chicoutimi, 59,716 in Jonquière and 19,742 in La Baie.⁵

Early settlement

The territory's colonial history begins with the fur trade. A trading post existed at Chicoutimi from 1671, and the trading post of Chicoutimi was formally established with a Jesuit mission at the mouth of the Chicoutimi River on 24 June 1676, the date Chicoutimi treats as its historical founding.⁷ Permanent settlement came in 1842, when a small group settled around a sawmill built by Peter McLeod (1807–1852) at the foot of the first falls of the rivière du Moulin; the creation of the canton and municipality of Chicoutimi in 1845 marked the start of the region's industrial development.¹³ The name Chicoutimi is of Innu origin, recorded in many spellings from Chegoutimis (1661) onward.¹³

La Baie, at the head of the Saguenay Fjord on the baie des Ha! Ha!, originated as the municipality of Bagot in 1845, named for Sir Charles Bagot (1781–1843), Governor General of the Province of Canada from 1841 to 1843.¹³ The pulp industry drove 19th- and early 20th-century growth: the Chicoutimi pulp mill was for a time the largest mechanical pulp mill in the world, and aluminum smelters developed from the 1920s on the strength of the region's hydroelectric potential and a deep-water port usable year-round.¹⁴

The 1996 flood

In July 1996, and especially between 19 and 21 July, torrential rain saturated the soils of the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean region and caused what is known as the déluge du Saguenay, unprecedented flooding that hit La Baie, Chicoutimi and other sectors hard.²^•¹⁵ A public inquiry heard testimony from Environment Canada's meteorological service, dam owners such as Hydro-Québec and Alcan, government and municipal authorities, insurance experts, hydrology researchers and citizens.¹⁵ The flood destroyed the Jonquière mini power station on the rivière aux Sables weeks after its June 1996 commissioning; it was rebuilt at a cost of 4.3 million dollars and restarted in autumn 1998, and repairing the distribution network required a further 1 million dollars.¹⁶ Bank stabilization and dam and flood-protection works were subsequently carried out along the Saguenay River.¹⁷

Economy

Saguenay's economy rests on resource processing and energy. Promotion Saguenay, the city's economic development society, lists aluminum production and transformation, forestry, agri-food, energy, medical research and tourism as key sectors, and states that the region produces one third of all aluminum made in Canada, earning it the name Vallée de l'aluminum.⁶ Rio Tinto operates an alumina refinery, five wholly owned smelters and six hydropower plants in the region, including the AP60 smelter, and in May 2026 the Government of Quebec inaugurated 96 additional AP60 electrolysis cells at the AP60 technology center in Saguenay, a project of more than 2 billion dollars.¹⁸^•¹⁹

The city also runs its own electric utility. Hydro-Jonquière, named in 2002 when the city was created, distributes electricity to about 21,000 subscribers in the Jonquière, Kénogami and Lac-Kénogami sectors over roughly 450 km of lines, operates three hydroelectric stations (Chute-Garneau and Pont-Arnaud on the rivière Chicoutimi and Jonquière on the rivière aux Sables), and is the second-largest municipal electricity distribution network in Quebec by subscriber count after Sherbrooke.¹⁶

The Port of Saguenay, one of Canada's 17 port authorities, owns and operates the Grande-Anse Marine Terminal in the La Baie borough, handling general cargo, dry bulk and bulk liquids, and its deep-water facilities can accommodate some of the world's largest ships.²⁰ The port's cruise wharf at La Baie welcomes international cruise ships.²¹

Regional role

Saguenay functions as the service hub of its region. The city, which is also an MRC, concentrates more than 50 percent of the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean region's 286,395 inhabitants (2025).³ Its metropolitan area posted a gross domestic product of 10.5 billion dollars in 2024, up 7.5 percent from 2023, with manufacturing the largest sector at 18.2 percent of the metropolitan GDP.²² The city's 2024–2030 land-use plan frames its development around the image of a "capitale boréale", consolidating its historic pillars of forestry, hydroelectricity and aluminum while diversifying into new sectors.²³

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Places and geography › Settlements and neighborhoods › Cities and towns › Cities, towns, and villages of the Americas › Cities and towns in Canada › Cities and towns in Quebec

Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 17, 2026; Oct 21, 2026 · Edited: Sep 17, 2026; Oct 21, 2026 · Last review: Oct 21, 2026

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