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Lévis is a city in eastern Quebec, Canada. It is 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 Société de transport de Lévis is responsible for public transportation by bus. The population in 2011 was 138,769. 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. ==History== First Nations people are said to have favored the Pointe-Lévy (currently named Lévis) area long before French settlement due to its ideal location, at the junction of the St-Lawrence and the Chaudière rivers. Many archeological sites reveal evidence of human occupation for about 10,000 years. Some historians theorize that Pointe-Lévy could have been one of the main centres of Native American population development in the Quebec province. In 1636, approximately 28 years after the foundation of Quebec City, The seignory of Lauzon was founded on the eastern part of the actual territory. In the following years, other seignories were founded near the St-Lawrence river. Pointe-Lévy was mainly an agricultural domain in which several lords ("Seigneurs") controlled their part of land in a medieval feodal way. The land of the Lauzon seignory remained unoccupied until 1647, when Guillaume Couture became the first European settler installed in front of Quebec City. Couture was at the time first Administrator, Chief Magistrate, Captain of the Militia, member of the Sovereign Council and was widely considered a hero in New France. Couture was however not the first seignor of the Lauzon Seignory, as the land was owned by Jean de Lauzon (French Governor between 1651 and 1657). During the Seven Years' War in the summer of 1759, General James Wolfe established a camp in the territory of Pointe-Lévy and laid siege to Quebec City. The siege succeeded and after firing cannons from the hills of Pointe-Lévy for three months and the battle on the plains in front of the walls, Quebec fell to the British. During this time, Pointe-Lévy served as the main camp to sustain the British army in the Quebec area. The constant cannon firing between Quebec City and Pointe-Lévy also served as a way to stop the French and British ships from going farther on the St. Lawrence river thus preventing reinforcement to other major cities like Montreal. In 1763, Marie-Josephte Corriveau was hanged in Quebec City for killing her husband, and, in accordance with English practice, her body was displayed in a cage for several weeks in St-Joseph-de-la-Pointe-Lévy (old part of the former City of Lauzon). This was an unusual punishment used for the first time by the British government in North America and reserved for persons found guilty of particularly heinous crimes. This punishment was practised in England since the Middle Ages. From 1854, the railroad appeared in Pointe-Lévy making the city a major transportation centre for commerce and immigration. Being on the south shore of the St. Lawrence river, Pointe-Levy could be connected through rail to Ontario, Maine (and from there the whole United States) and the Maritime Provinces. Many years later, between 1865 and 1872 while the city was still under control of Britain, a series of three forts were built to protect Quebec and the surroundings from the threat of American invasion. The forts were never really used for their intended purpose. One of these forts (Fort no.1) still remains today and can be visited. The City of Lévis, named after the successor to Montcalm, the Chevalier de Levis, was erected in 1861. The founder of this new city was Mgr. Joseph-David Déziel (1806–1882). Many municipalities in the territory of present-day Lévis were merged between 1861 and 2002. Many towns were created and the Village of Pointe-Levy (or St-Joseph-de-la-Pointe-Lévy) became the Village of Lauzon in 1867 and then the City of Lauzon in 1910. In the late 19th and beginning of the 20th century, Alphonse Desjardins, pioneered the foundation of the credit union movement and founded the first ''caisse populaire'' in Lévis. He also began a long process to create what later became the Desjardins Group by travelling everywhere in Quebec helping people in other cities to start their own credit union. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Lévis, Quebec」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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