The village is one of the northernmost inhabited places in Quebec, located on the eastern shore of Diana Bay (Tuvaaluk in the Inuktitut language), on a peninsula which protrudes into the Hudson Strait where it meets Ungava Bay.

According to local folklore, this name derives from a man who once came to the area to hunt beluga and found live parasites in his feces.

After a measles epidemic killed 11 adults in 1952, the Canadian government began delivering basic services to the community.

The climate type of Quaqtaq is a typical tundra climate (Köppen: ETf), because the average temperature in the warmest July and August is only 6.3 °C (43.3 °F), while the hottest month in areas with similar latitudes is much higher than it, such as Anchorage is 15.3 °C (59.5 °F), and Bergen is 15.6 °C (60.1 °F), while inland Yakutsk can reach 19.9 °C (67.8 °F).

[12] Notable people from the community include musicians Beatrice Deer and Jaaji Uppik.