La Pocatière, Quebec

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

La Pocatière is a town in the Kamouraska Regional County Municipality within the Bas-Saint-Laurent region of Quebec. The mayor is Bernard Généreux.

A Bombardier plant which manufactures subway and railway cars is located there. Educational institutions include the Collège de Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière and the Cégep de La Pocatière. A Quebec government facility, the Institut de technologie agroalimentaire, is also found in La Pocatière. Adding to this, 3 public schools : École Sacré-Coeur, École Polyvalente La Pocatière and Éducation des adultes.

La Pocatière is also home to the Musée François-Pilote, a museum of Quebecois ethnology, specializing in the history of agricultural education in the region. Its namesake, l'Abbé François Pilote, founded the first permanent school of agriculture in Canada, and the museum showcases equipment used throughout the history of the school. The fourth and top floor of the museum is dedicated to the history of agricultural education, as well as a display of birds preserved by the ornithologist Antoine Tanguay. The third presents examples of rooms from Quebecois homes at in the early 1900s; there are three from a bourgeois household, and several from the home of a well-off farmer, using the real furniture from his estate, as well as an example of a rural schoolroom, country store, optician's, and the offices of a parish priest, notary, doctor and dentist. An exhibit on the work of l'Abbé Maurice Proulx, a pioneer in Quebecois cinema and a former educator at the School of Agriculture. The second floor presents the animals of the region, as well as a visiting exhibition which changes each year. Finally, on the first floor is the history of maple syrup production, a display of the tools of several crafts practiced in the region, an exhibit of modes of transportation, and examples of agriculural machinery.

Near the city are small isolated hills known as monadnocks. The Montagne du College-de-Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière rises 119 metres at its summit.

According to the Canada 2001 Census: