Les Chenaux Regional County Municipality

Les Chenaux (French pronunciation: [le ʃəno], meaning the channels in French) is a regional county municipality in central Quebec, Canada, in the Mauricie region. The seat is in Saint-Luc-de-Vincennes. It is located adjacent on the east of Trois-Rivières on the Saint Lawrence River. It has a land area of 872.04 square kilometres (336.70 sq mi) and a population of 17,865 inhabitants in the Canada 2011 Census. Its largest community is the parish of Notre-Dame-du-Mont-Carmel.

Les Chenaux is one of the few regional county municipalities in Quebec that does not constitute its own census division; instead, it is grouped with Trois-Rivières as the single census division of Francheville.

Geography

The "Les Chenaux" RCM is an area east of Trois-Rivières, located between the villages of Champlain and Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade on north shore of St. Lawrence River. The MRC is approximately 40 km in length to about 20 kilometers in depth. The territory is crossed by three rivers flowing from north to south: Champlain River, Batiscan River and Sainte-Anne River.

History

The RCM was created in 2002, when the area was realigned to make way for the amalgamations of nearby Trois-Rivières and Shawinigan. All of the municipalities, except for Notre-Dame-du-Mont-Carmel (which came from Centre-de-la-Mauricie RCM), used to belong to the former Francheville Regional County Municipality. This RCM was dissolved when six of its municipalities amalgamated with the city of Trois-Rivières, and Saint-Étienne-des-Grès was added to the Maskinongé RCM. The remaining municipalities were grouped into a new regional county called Les Chenaux.