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Along Quebec Highways

Colour photograph of the title page of the tourist guide Along the Quebec Highways. It is written: Along Quebec Highways Tourist Guide. Published by the Department of Highways and Mines (Provincial Tourism Bureau), February 1930. Names of officials: Minister J. E. Perrault, Deputy Minister J. L. Boulanger and Secretary Arthur Bergeron.

Book

Along Quebec Highways, 1930

Department of Highways and Mines (Provincial Tourist Bureau)

Amis des Jardins de Métis Collection

Within months of its opening, the Gaspé Peninsula became the province’s premier driving destination. Not simply a driving holiday, the Gaspésie was one better – a tour – a shoreline roadway that offered visitors a circuit without ever having to travel the same road twice. The “Tour de la Gaspésie” and “Gaspé Tour” became a popular aspiration for drivers and their families in search of new destinations and new discoveries.

In 1930, the government of Quebec published its first complete guidebook for motorists. Titled simply “Along Quebec Highways”, the tome presented the fifty highways of Quebec. The minister of Highways and Mines, Joseph-Édouard Perrault, said the objective of the guide was to make known “the incomparable beauties and inexhaustible riches of this noble land, which is the centre of French culture in America”. The guidebook noted with pride that Quebec had progressed from having virtually no roads in 1907 to 4,973 miles of roads in 1930. The number of automobiles had also skyrocketed, from just 254 registered in the province in 1907 to 170,000 by 1930.