Country Canada Settled 1839 Time zone EST (UTC−5) Province Québec | Constituted January 1, 1859 Area 530.2 km² | |
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L'Anse-Saint-Jean is a municipality in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region of Quebec, Canada. Its population was 1208 in the Canada 2011 Census.
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Map of L'Anse-Saint-Jean, QC, Canada
L'Anse-Saint-Jean was founded in 1838 by the Société des Vingt-et-un, a group of lumber prospectors and investors from Charlevoix which was responsible for opening up the Saguenay region to colonization.
Le Royaume de L'Anse-Saint-Jean
It achieved a certain notoriety when its citizens held a referendum on January 21, 1997, to turn the village into the Le Royaume de L'Anse-Saint-Jean, the continent's first "municipal monarchy." The monarchists won 73.9% of the vote, with Denys Tremblay becoming King Denys I. The king was crowned on June 24, Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day, in the Église Saint-Jean-Baptiste, and announced plans to build a "vegetable oratory," Saint-Jean-du-Millénaire (Saint John of the Millennium). This micronational project was cheerfully conceded to be a way of boosting tourism in the region, which had been hit by the 1996 Saguenay Flood.