Description of Historic Place

Hôpital-Général de Québec Cemetery National Historic Site of Canada is located in the Saint-Roch and Saint-Sauveur quarters of Québec City's Lower Town, on the grounds of l'Hôpital-Général de Québec. This cemetery landscape was designated to commemorate soldiers who died as a result of the battles of the Plains of Abraham and Sainte-Foy.

Heritage Value

Hôpital-Général de Québec Cemetery was designated a national historic site of Canada:
- to commemorate the graves of over 1000 French and British soldiers whose names were scrupulously recorded by the Augustine Sisters of the Hôpital-Général de Québec, many of whom died in the battles of the Plains of Abraham and Sainte-Foy, the two decisive colonial battles between France and England for supremacy of North America; and
- because the register of the dead itself is a rare document which records the death of soldiers killed in battle.

Hôpital-Général de Québec Cemetery National Historic Site of Canada consists of the small central part of a much larger cemetery, which was established in 1755-1760. This central section contains the earliest graves, of which 277 are those of soldiers interred in the cemetery from the Battles of the Plains of Abraham and Sainte-Foy. Some 277 are identified by gravestones, the remaining 747 died of illnesses contracted during the course of the Seven Years War after these battles. The names, birthplaces, and sometimes the ages of these 1,058 Indigenous, French-Canadian, French and British soldiers are recorded in the first parish register of Notre-Dame-des-Anges. The cemetery was named ''the Cemetery of Heroes'' by archivist Pierre-Georges Roy in 1940.

The heritage value of the site lies in its role as a memorial to the French-English struggle for supremacy in North America in colonial times. Its value is amplified by knowledge about the identity and socio-cultural profiles of these soldiers, knowledge recorded in the first parish register of Notre-Dame-des-Anges, itself a rare manuscript record.

Sources: Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, Minutes, 1998; Commemorative Integrity Statement, 2003.

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements contributing to the heritage value of this site include:

- its location and setting within the Hôpital-Général de Quebec Cemetery;
- the footprint establishing its boundaries;
- the layout and footprints of the graves;
- the levels of the terrain, as they are;
- the profiles and massing, forms and materials of its memorials and gravestones;
- the integrity of the form and materials of the reconstructed mausoleum containing remnants of the Marquis de Montcalm;
- all evidence of early features of the mass grave on the location of the present mausoleum;
- all archaeological remnants, extant, located or potential, on the site associated with the 1755-1760 graves;
- viewscapes to later sections of the Cimetière de l'Hôpital de Québec and to l'Hôpital-Général de Québec;
- the continued preservation of the register of the dead as a manuscript, and the continued association of the knowledge it contains with the contents and layout of the site itself;
- public accessibility to the site.