Quebec City is the capital of the Canadian province of Quebec. There were 549,459 people living in Quebec City as of July 2021, and 839,311 people living in the Census Metropolitan Area, which includes the neighboring municipalities. It is Canada’s seventh-largest metropolitan region and twelfth-largest city. In addition, it is the province’s second-biggest city, behind Montreal. It experiences cold, snowy winters and sultry, humid summers due to its continental climate. Samuel de Champlain, an explorer, established a French town here in 1608 and gave it the Algonquian name. One of the earliest European settlements in North America is Quebec City. The only intact defensive city walls in the Americas north of Mexico are the ramparts that encircle Old Quebec (Vieux-Québec). In 1985, UNESCO designated this region as the “Historic District of Old Québec” as a World Heritage Site. There is only one approved form for the names of Canadian cities and towns, according to the Geographical Names Board of Canada, the Government of Canada, and the Government of Quebec. Therefore, in both Canadian English and French, Québec is spelled with an accented é. Nonetheless, the English and French versions of province names sometimes differ. Consequently, the federal government style in English separates the city from the province by spelling the former with a sharp accent (Québec) and the latter without. Both names are spelled “Québec” by the Quebec government, even when writing in English. The two are differentiated in French by the fact that city names do not typically accept definite articles, whereas province titles, including Quebec, do. Thus, “in Quebec City” is à Québec, “in the province of Quebec” is au Québec, and so on; the city is Québec and the province is le Québec. Because the Saint Lawrence River narrows by the Quebec promontory and its Cape Diamant, the region was first called Kébec by the Algonquian people, a word that means “where the river narrows” in Algonquian[b]. The only walled city north of Mexico with surviving walls is Quebec City, one of the oldest European settlements in North America. Few cities in Canada and the United States were established before Quebec City (St. John’s, Harbour Grace, Port Royal, St. Augustine, Santa Fe, Jamestown, and Tadoussac), despite the fact that many of the main cities in Latin America were founded in the 16th century. Fort Charlesbourg-Royal, the oldest known French settlement in North America, was founded there in 1541 by explorer Jacques Cartier with 400 people. However, it was abandoned less than a year later because of the harsh winter and the native population’s resistance to colonial encroachment.The fort was located in the suburban hamlet of Cap-Rouge, which became part of Quebec City in 2002, at the mouth of the Rivière du Cap Rouge. On July 3, 1608, French explorer and diplomat Samuel de Champlain established Quebec on the site of Stadacona, an abandoned St. Lawrence Iroquoian village. For the remainder of his life, Champlain—who became known as “The Father of New France”—oversaw it.