Gaspé

Town at the east end of the Gaspé Peninsula, southeast Québec, Canada; population (1991) 16,400. It is situated 555 km/345 mi east-northeast of Québec City, at the mouth of the York River on Gaspé Bay, an inlet of the Gulf of St Lawrence. The town, a 1970 amalgamation of twelve localities, is the administrative and industrial centre of the peninsula, and is a deepwater port. Fishing, especially for cod and salmon, is important to the local economy, as are lumbering, trade, and tourism.

French explorer Jacques Cartier took possession of the land, which was in Micmac American Indian territory, in the name of the king of France, on 24 July 1534. A fishing port and supply base for New France in the 16th-18th centuries, Gaspé was the object of intermittent struggles between the French and the British. American Loyalists (those who remained loyal to Britain during the American Revolution) settled here following the Revolution, and the community has remained largely anglophone.