Gatineau

Gatineau (/ˈɡætɪnoʊ/ GAT-in-oh; French: [ɡatino] ^ⓘ) is a city in southwestern Quebec, Canada. It is located on the northern bank of the Ottawa River, directly across from Ottawa, Ontario. Gatineau is the largest city in the Outaouais administrative region of Quebec and is also part of Canada's National Capital Region. As of 2021, Gatineau is the fourth-largest city in Quebec with a population of 291,041. Gatineau is also part of the Ottawa-Gatineau census metropolitan area with a population of 1,488,307, making it the fourth largest in Canada.

Gatineau is coextensive with a territory equivalent to a regional county municipality (TE) and census division (CD) of the same name, whose geographical code is 81. It is the seat of the judicial district of Hull.

It is also the most bilingual (French-English) city in Canada.

In 1613, during his first passage on the Ottawa River, the great explorer Samuel de Champlain was the first European to speak of "the river that comes from the north", traveled for millennia by Aboriginals, but he did not name it. In 1721, Canadian surveyor Noël Beaupré recorded the river, but did not give it a name. In short, the name Gatineau was not used in New France.

In fact, it was not until 1783 that the river was mentioned as Lettinoe in a report by Lieutenant David Jones to the Governor of Quebec, Sir Frederic Haldimand. In 1817, a map by Theodore Davis shows Gatteno, a name taken up with Gatino, Gateno and Gattino on plans by Philemon Wright, the founder of Hull Township, and by Lieutenant-Colonel John By, the engineer responsible for building the Rideau Canal.

It was not until 1821 that the name Gatineau first appeared on a map of Nepean Township, Ontario. The same name appears again on William Henderson's map of 1831, and on another drawn 30 years later by surveyor Thomas Devine. Thereafter, the river was always referred to as the Gatineau.

There are two hypotheses to explain the origin of the city's name. It would be either of Indigenous origin or of French origin:

Prior to European settlement, the Gatineau area was inhabited by the Algonquin people which is part of the larger Anishinaabe. The current city of Gatineau is centred on an area formerly called Hull. It is the oldest European colonial settlement in the National Capital Region, but this area was essentially not developed by Europeans until after the American Revolutionary War, when the Crown granted land through the Leaders and Associates program of the Lower Canada Executive, which brought settlement in the Ottawa Valley.