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Lévis

Lévis (French pronunciation: [levi] ) is a city in eastern Quebec, Canada, located on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, opposite Quebec City. A ferry links Old Quebec with Old Lévis, and two bridges, the Quebec Bridge and the Pierre-Laporte Bridge, connect western Lévis with Quebec City.

The population in 2021 was 149,683. Its current incarnation was founded on January 1, 2002, as the result of a merger among ten cities, including the older city of Lévis founded in 1861.

Lévis is also the name of a territory equivalent to a regional county municipality (TE) and census division (CD) of Quebec, coextensive with the city of Lévis. Its geographical code is 25 as a census division, and 251 as an RCM-equivalent territory.

First Nations and prehistoric indigenous peoples settled in this area for thousands of years due to its ideal location at the confluence of the Chaudière and the St. Lawrence rivers. Many archeological sites reveal evidence of human occupation dating to 10,000 BP. Some historians theorize that Pointe-Lévy could have been one of the main centres of Native American population development in what became the province of Québec.

In 1636, approximately 28 years after the French founded Quebec City, the seignory of Lauzon was founded on the eastern part of this territory. In the following years, other seignories were founded near the St. Lawrence River. Pointe-Lévy was primarily developed as an agricultural domain, in which several land-owners ("Seigneurs") controlled their part of land in a medieval feudal system.

The land of the Lauzon seignory remained unoccupied until 1647, when Guillaume Couture became the first French settler installed by Quebec City. Couture was serving as the first Administrator, Chief Magistrate, Captain of the Militia, and member of the Sovereign Council; he was widely considered a hero among colonists in New France. Couture, however, was not the first 'Seigneur' of the Lauzon Seignory, as the land had been previously owned by Jean de Lauson (French Governor between 1651 and 1657).

During the Seven Years' War, in the summer of 1759, British General James Wolfe established a camp in the territory of Pointe-Lévy and laid siege to Quebec City. The siege succeeded. After being under bombardment for three months and fighting the English in the battle on the Plains of Abraham in front of the walls, Quebec fell to the British. During this time, Pointe-Lévy served as the main encampment of the British army in the Quebec area. The constant cannon firing between Quebec City and Pointe-Lévy discouraged both French and British ships from advancing further up the St. Lawrence, and reinforcements and supplies did not reach other major cities such as Montréal.

In 1763, after the English took over French territory east of the Mississippi River in North America, a jury convicted Marie-Josephte Corriveau, "la Corriveau", of murdering her husband with a pitch-fork and she was condemned to death. She was hanged in Quebec City, and the British displayed her body in a cage for several weeks in Saint-Joseph-de-la-Pointe-Lévy (old part of the former City of Lauzon). This was the first time they had used this practice in North America; it was reserved for persons found guilty of particularly heinous crimes. This punishment had been practised in England since the Middle Ages.

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