Notre Dame Mountains

The Notre Dame Mountains are a portion of the Appalachian Mountains, extending from the Gaspé Peninsula of Quebec to the Green Mountains of Vermont.

The range runs from northeast to southwest, forming the southern edge of the St. Lawrence River valley, and following the Canada–United States border between Quebec and Maine. The mountainous New Brunswick "panhandle" is located in the Notre Dame range as well as the uppermost reaches of the Connecticut River valley in New Hampshire.

The geologically old mountains have eroded to an average height of around .

Etymology

Notre Dame is French for "Our Lady," a Catholic term referring to the Virgin Mary.

While on an expedition on 15 August 1535, Jacques Cartier wrote: The jour Notre Dame d'aoust XVe refers to the feast of the Assumption of Mary, commemorated in the Catholic Church on 15 August. The following autumn, maps he authored carried the name "haultes montaignes de Honguedo." However, it was the title of "Notre Dame" that would propagate quickly throughout the 16th century, with French navigator Jean Alfonse referring to them as the "montz Nostre Dame" in his 1544 work Cosmographie, followed by Gerardus Mercator in 1569.

Geography

Topography

The Notre Dame Mountains are the principal subrange of the Appalachian Mountains in Quebec. Within Quebec, the range parallels the St. Lawrence River until its terminus at the eastern end of the Gaspé Peninsula. However, the southern limit of the range is the subject of some debate, though some sources consider either Lake Memphremagog or the US border as the southern edge of the Notre Dame Mountains.

The Chic-Choc Mountains are one of the primary subranges of the Notre Dame Mountains. They are located in the northeastern part of the Gaspé Peninsula and are home to the tallest mountain in the range, Mont Jacques-Cartier, with an elevation of . The other major subsection of the Notre Dame Mountains is the Massif du Sud, which is found in the southern part of the range, southeast of Quebec City, and reaches an elevation of .

Geology

thumb|400px|right|[[Champlain Peak in Bic National Park]]

The Notre Dame Mountains formed 440 million years ago as part of the Canadian Appalachian Uplands physiographic region, and lie within the deformed Laurentian-margin rocks of the Humber zone. In southern Quebec, the Notre Dame Mountains anticlinorium is described as a regional structural and metamorphic dome within the internal Humber zone, exposing some of the higher-grade metamorphic rocks in the region. The rocks record Taconian deformation, including northeast-southwest schistosity, synmetamorphic folding, later crenulation cleavage, southeast-directed backthrusting, and normal faulting along the Saint Joseph Fault. The range's surficial geology was shaped by Laurentide glaciation. In the Saint-Sylvestre area, till, ice-contact deposits, and glaciolacustrine sediments are associated with the highland Front morainic system along the north-facing flank of the mountains.

Conservation

The Notre Dame Mountains are protected by several parks, both federally by Parks Canada and provincially by the Quebec Sépaq and New Brunswick:

Forillon National Park
Bic National Park
Frontenac National Park
Lake Témiscouata National Park
Gaspésie National Park
Mount Carleton Provincial Park