Notre-Dame de Québec parish

The first Roman Catholic parish in North America, Notre-Dame de Québec, was established on 15 Sept. 1664 by Bishop François de Laval. Corresponding approximately to the current boundaries of Old Quebec, and with some 500 inhabitants at the time, its religious centre was the church of Notre-Dame-de-l’Immaculée-Conception, which became a cathedral in 1674. The parish, whose founding was the result of Bishop Laval’s desired to organize the colony of New France and establish the foundations of an ecclesiastical power, became the cornerstone of an institutional structure that extended to a large part of the province of Quebec.