La Mauricie

La Mauricie protects 536 km² on the southern edge of the Laurentians, in Quebec, halfway between Montreal and Quebec City. It was created in 1970, the same year as Forillon, and represents a sample of the Canadian Shield landscape in its transition to the St Lawrence lowlands: rounded hills of very ancient Precambrian rock, covered in mixed forest and dotted with more than a hundred and fifty lakes and ponds scooped out by the glaciers.

That abundance of water defines the experience of the park. Canoe routes, with portages between lakes, are its most characteristic activity and allow trips of several days through the interior, complemented by a network of trails and by the scenic road that crosses the park from east to west with viewpoints over the valleys. The mixed forest of maple, birch, beech, spruce and pine produces in autumn a burst of colour to rival that of New England, and that is the season of greatest visitor numbers.

The wildlife is that typical of the temperate and boreal forest of Quebec: moose, black bear, beaver — very visible from its dams and lodges in the watercourses — otter, lynx and a bird community in which the common loon, whose call is one of the park's identifying sounds, stands out. The region also has an intense forestry history: before the park was created, the Saint-Maurice basin was for more than a century a territory of timber extraction and log driving, and traces of that activity remain, along with the former private hunting and fishing clubs that occupied the area until it passed into public hands.