What if you could fly over Quebec like a bird? As you travelled from south to north, you would discover a highly diverse territoryA territory is an area of land, or sometimes of sea, that we can say "belongs"... extending from the Appalachian Mountains in the southeast to the plateau of the Canadian Shield –which makes up the largest part of the territory—to the north. The St. Lawrence Lowlands would be somewhere in between.
The further north you go, the more arid the soil becomes. As you leave behind the coniferous and deciduous trees of the mixed forest, you travel over the boreal forestBoreal Forest - This kind of forest has coniferous and deciduous trees. It covers about 60%..., which is made up entirely of conifers. Finally, you reach the tundra, where only lichen manages to grow. This wide change in vegetationVegetation means all plants and trees collectively, and often typically to those in a specific region. For... is due to a change in climateClimate is the average and normal weather in a specific place or region. .
In Quebec, the further north you go, the colder it gets. The southernmost portion of the province has a humid continental climateContinental climate is a climate with winter temperatures cold enough to support a fixed period of... with hot, humid summers. This explains why the majority of Quebec’s populationPopulation comes from the Latin populus, meaning “the people.” We say population when we talk about a group... lived in the south along the banks of the St. Lawrence River. However, more and more people were settling in more northern regions like Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean and Abitibi.
Now imagine that you’ve headed back south and are now flying over the St. Lawrence. This mighty river gave Quebec a strategic location between the Atlantic Ocean and the Great Lakes. As a result, the river was a heavily used route for commercial ships that travelled back and forth between Europe and North America. Montreal, the economic metropolis of the province, was located at the southern tip of Quebec, close to other major urban centres in Ontario and the United States.
The entire territoryA territory is an area of land, or sometimes of sea, that we can say "belongs"... was rich in natural resourcesResources are anything taken from the earth or nature that people need, use, and are "valued"..... In Quebec, there were many mature forests that were used to produce timber and paper. There were also thousands of rivers that were used for travelling or generating electricity. Mines were also being operated in certain regions where copper, iron and asbestos, among other things, were exploited. North or south, no matter where you lived, there was always a resource to be exploited.
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