Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index

L'Anse-Saint-Jean, Quebec

L'Anse-Saint-Jean is a small town, population 1269 (2001) in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region of Quebec, Canada.

L'Anse-Saint-Jean was founded in 1838 by the Society of Twenty-one, a group of lumber prospectors and investors which was responsible for opening up the Saguenay region to colonization.

It achieved a certain notoriety when its citizens held a referendum on January 21, 1997, to turn the village into the Kingdom of L'Anse-Saint-Jean, the continent's first "municipal monarchy." The monarchists won 73.9% of the vote, with Denys Tremblay becoming King Denys I. The king was crowned on June 24, Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day, in the Église Saint-Jean-Baptiste, and announced plans to build a "vegetable oratory," Saint-Jean-du-Millénaire (Saint John of the Millennium). This micronational project was cheerfully conceded to be a way of boosting tourism in the region, which had been hit by the floods on the Saguenay River in 1996.

See List of communities in Quebec.

External links

Monarchy of L'Anse-Saint-Jean