Plains of Abraham - Name and Features

Name and Features

The plains are named after Abraham Martin (1589-1664), a fisherman and river pilot called The Scot, who owned a plot of land near the site of the present park which he used for grazing his livestock. Abraham's name appears in the toponymy of Quebec City at the time of the French regime, the deeds of the 17th and 18th centuries referring to the coast of Abraham, and a 1734 plan even precisely locating an Abraham Street. Later, the journals of the Chevalier de Levis and the Marquis de Montcalm referred to the Heights of Abraham, as did the diaries of British soldiers, who also employed the phrase Plains of Abraham.

The park itself presently occupies an area approximately 2.4 km (1.5 mi) long by 0.8 km (0.5 mi) wide, 43.7 ha (108 acre) that extends westward from the Citadelle of Quebec and the walls of Quebec City along a plateau above the Saint Lawrence River, and forms a part of The Battlefields Park. An interpretive centre and walking trails have been built on the site, and monuments commemorate the Battle of Sainte-Foy and James Wolfe, the latter being an astronomic meridian marker raised in 1790 by the Surveyor-General of Canada, Major Holland, on the site where Wolfe was said to have died. In 1913, the National Battlefields Commission placed a column identical to one that had been built on the site in 1849, and a Cross of Sacrifice was constructed on the plains to commemorate soldiers who were lost in World War I; it continues to be the location of Remembrance Day ceremonies every year.