Canyon Sainte-Anne

Open from May to October, Canyon Sainte-Anne is a spectacular, steep-sided gorge, carved by the Sainte-Anne-du-Nord River, 6 km east of Beaupré, Quebec, Canada.

Accessible to the public since 1973, the canyon was familiar to natives, painted by Kreighoff and described by American philosopher and environmentalist Henry David Thoreau.

The Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré Basilica, the ski resort Mont Sainte-Anne, the Montmorency Falls and the Cap Tourmente National Wildlife Reserve are in the same area.

This metamorphic rock, called granitic gneiss, was formed at high pressure in the extremely hot depths of earth then rose to the surface through erosional uplift.

Later, some 450 million years ago, a sedimentary Palaeozoic sediment, a marine mud, was deposited in ancient seas on top of the gneiss, and consolidated into a rock called shale.