Maria-Chapdelaine is a regional county municipality in the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean region of Quebec, Canada. Its seat is in Dolbeau-Mistassini.
It runs from Lac Saint-Jean in the south to the deep interior of northern Quebec in the north.
Subdivisions There are 15 subdivisions within the RCM:
Cities & Towns (2) Dolbeau-Mistassini Normandin
Municipalities (8) Albanel Girardville Notre-Dame-de-Lorette Péribonka Saint-Edmond-les-Plaines Saint-Eugène-d'Argentenay Saint-Stanislas Saint-Thomas-Didyme
Parishes (1) Saint-Augustin
Villages (1) Sainte-Jeanne-d'Arc
Unorganized Territory (3) Passes-Dangereuses Rivière-Mistassini Sainte-Élisabeth-de-Proulx
Transportation Access Routes Highways and numbered routes that run through the municipality, including external routes that start or finish at the county border:Official Transport Quebec Road Map
Autoroutes None
Principal Highways
Secondary Highways
External Routes None
Demographics In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, the RCM of Maria-Chapdelaine had a population of 24,149 living in 10,967 of its 12,185 total private dwellings, a change of -2.6% from its 2016 population of 24,793. With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.
In 2021, the median age was 50.0, as opposed to 41.6 for all of Canada. French was the mother tongue of 99.0% of residents in 2021. The next most common mother tongues were the related languages of Atikamekw and Innu at 0.3% total, followed by English and Spanish at 0.3% each. 0.3% reported both English and French as their first language. Additionally there were 0.1% who reported both French and a non-official language as their mother tongue.
As of 2021, Indigenous peoples comprised 6.8% of the population, and visible minorities contributed 1.1%. The largest visible minority groups in the RCM of Maria-Chapdelaine are Black (0.5%), Arab (0.2%), and Latin American (0.2%).
In 2021, 79.1% of the population identified as Catholic, while 13.6% said they had no religious affiliation. Jehovah's Witnesses were the largest religious minority, making up 0.6% of the population. Muslims were the largest non-Christian religious minority, making up just over 0.1% of the population.
Counting both single and multiple responses, the most commonly identified ethnocultural ancestries were: Ethnic origin2021Canadian42.1%French21.0%Québécois15.4%French Canadian9.4%First Nations4.2%Métis2.7%Irish1.6%Innu1.2%Acadian1.0% (Percentages may total more than 100% due to rounding and multiple responses).
See also List of regional county municipalities and equivalent territories in Quebec
References