Cap Diamant (
English: Cape Diamond) is a
cape
A cape is a clothing accessory or a sleeveless outer garment which drapes the wearer's back, arms, and chest, and connects at the neck.
History
Capes were common in medieval Europe, especially when combined with a hood in the chaperon. T ...
on an edge of the
Promontory of Quebec and on which
Quebec City
Quebec City ( or ; french: Ville de Québec), officially Québec (), is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Quebec. As of July 2021, the city had a population of 549,459, and the Communauté métrop ...
is located, formed by the confluence of a bend in the
St. Lawrence River to the south and east, and the much smaller
Saint-Charles River to the north.
Jacques Cartier, the French explorer who found glittering stones in the high cliff, thought the stones contained
diamonds
Diamond is a solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. Another solid form of carbon known as graphite is the chemically stable form of carbon at room temperature and pressure, ...
. After he brought samples of these stones to France in 1542, experts concluded that these "diamonds" were actually
quartz
Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica ( silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical ...
, hence the proverb "Faux comme un diamant du Canada" ("as fake (or as false) as a Canadian diamond").
In 1759, the troops of British General
James Wolfe climbed Cap Diamant toward the
Plains of Abraham to
conquer Quebec.
In 1889 the
Quebec rockslide fell from Cap Diamant.
Popular culture
A song entitled "Cap Diamant" was on Canadian singer-songwriter
Coeur de Pirate's second CD, ''
Blonde''.
References
Commission de toponymie du Québec - Cap Diamant
Landforms of Quebec City
Landforms of Capitale-Nationale
Headlands of Quebec
Saint Lawrence River
{{Quebec-geo-stub