Rivière-du-Loup
Rivière-du-Loup is a small city on the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River in Quebec. The city is the seat for the Rivière-du-Loup Regional County Municipality and the judicial district of Kamouraska.
History
The city was named after the nearby river, whose name means Wolf's River in French. This name may have come from a native tribe known as "Les Loups" or from the many seals, known in French as loup-marin, once found at the river's mouth.Rivière-du-Loup was established in 1673 as the seigneurie of Sieur Charles-Aubert de la Chesnaye. The community was incorporated as the village of Fraserville, in honour of early Scottish settler Alexander Fraser, in 1850, and became a city in 1910. The city reverted to its original name, Rivière-du-Loup, in 1919.
Between 1850 and 1919, the city saw large increases in its anglophone population. Most of them left the region by the 1950s. 1% of the population still speaks English as its first language.
In fall of 1950 Rivière-du-Loup was the site of a nuclear accident. A USAF B-50 was returning a nuclear bomb to the USA. The bomb was released due to engine troubles, and then was destroyed in a non-nuclear detonation before it hit the ground. The explosion scattered nearly 100 pounds of uranium.
Transportation
Rivière-du-Loup is a traditional stopping point between Quebec City, the Maritimes and the Gaspé Peninsula. The Trans-Canada Highway turns south here, transferring from Autoroute 20 to Autoroute 85 and continuing southerly to Edmundston, New Brunswick.There is a ferry that crosses the river to Saint-Siméon on the north shore.
The city is also served by the Rivière-du-Loup Airport. The town can also be reached by Via Rail on the train named The Ocean, between Montreal and Halifax.
Media
Television
Rivière-du-Loup is an unusual television market, as each of its stations has two transmitters in the city. The city's hilly terrain causes residents of the lower, western portions of the city to experience frequent signal dropout. That makes it all but impossible for a television station to serve the entire area with a single transmitter. Accordingly, each station in the city has both a primary transmitter and a "nested" low-power rebroadcaster to serve viewers in the western part of the city who cannot receive the primary signal.Also, the city is served by Canada's only triple-stick operation, in which all three of its licensed stations are owned by the same company, Télé Inter-Rives.
| OTA virtual channel | OTA actual channel | Vidéotron Cable | Call sign | Network | Notes |
| 7.1 | 7 | 10 | CKRT-DT | Ici Radio-Canada Télé | Maintains low-power rebroadcaster on VHF channel 13 |
| 9.1 | 9 | 4 | CIMT-DT | TVA | Maintains low-power rebroadcaster on UHF channel 41 |
| 29.1 | 29 | 5 | CFTF-DT | V | Maintains low-power rebroadcaster on VHF channel 11 |
Rivière-du-Loup is a mandatory market for digital television conversion; Télé Inter-Rives converted all of its transmitters to digital prior to the deadline of August 30, 2011.
Unlike most larger cities in Quebec, Rivière-du-Loup has no local Télé-Québec outlet, though Rimouski's CIVB-DT is available on the Vidéotron system in Rivière-du-Loup.
Radio
- FM 89.5 - CJBR-FM-1, Ici Radio-Canada Première
- FM 90.7 - CBRX-FM-3, Ici Musique
- FM 103.7 - CIEL-FM, AC
- FM 107.1 - CIBM-FM, CHR
- FM 107.9 - CIBM-FM-1
Notable people
People born there include:
- Danielle April, artist
- Joseph Jean Benoit, 31st Canadian Surgeon General
- Nicolas Dickner, writer
- Dr. John McLoughlin, known as "the father of Oregon"
- Louis-Philippe Picard, member of the House of Commons of Canada
- Maurice Arthur Pope, soldier and diplomat
- Allan Sirois, professional hockey player
- Alexandre-Antonin Taché, first Archbishop of Saint Boniface