[7] The city of Saguenay constitutes a territory equivalent to a regional county municipality (TE); its geographical code is 941.

The name Saguenay is possibly derived from the Innu word "Saki-nip", which means "where water flows out".

[10][11] Saguenay was formed on February 18, 2002, by amalgamating the cities of Chicoutimi, Jonquière, La Baie and Laterrière, along with the municipalities of Lac-Kénogami and Shipshaw and part of the township of Tremblay.

[12] First Nations people, including Innus have inhabited the Saguenay Fjord area for thousands of years prior to the first Europeans arriving.

The city of Chicoutimi was officially incorporated as a municipality in 1845 by Peter McLeod, a Métis timber contractor, who had built a sawmill there in 1842.

The economic decline of the Great Depression led the city's economy to shift administration and commerce and commercial.

During the summer of 1996 a record rainfall in the region caused major flooding in the downtown, as well as outlying areas.

Jonquière was founded in 1847 by Marguerite Belley, who came from La Malbaie to settle on the Rivière aux Sables.

In 1942, to supply power to the plant, Alcan built a hydroelectric station at Shipshaw that was the largest in the world at that time.

Jonquière was the host city for the Quebec Games in the winter of 1976, and for the Canoe/Kayak World Championships in slalom and whitewater racing, in 1979.

Much of Jonquière's development owed its strength to the Price family, who ran a pulp and paper factory in Kénogami.

Jonquière is probably best known in the United States as a result of the local Wal-Mart store which attempted to unionize and was closed down shortly thereafter.

The relatively small and concentrated Lac St-Jean area where the city is located can be described as an isolated "oasis" in the middle of the vast remote wilderness of Northern Quebec.

There are no human settlements due north of Saguenay all the way to the Canadian Arctic islands, except for a few isolated Cree and Inuit villages.

However, the remote, paved Route 167/113 heads northwest to the interior town of Chibougamau, providing access to Western Quebec and Hudson Bay.

The city features two brief transition seasons (spring and autumn), while summers are warm and occasionally hot, and winters are long and very cold.

[16] The low winter temperatures characteristic of Saguenay are caused by a combination of factors, such as the cold waters of the Labrador Current and Hudson Bay to the north and east of the city.

Counting both single and multiple responses, the most commonly identified ethnocultural ancestries were: French was the mother tongue of 97.4% of residents in 2021.

[28] It is increasingly based on developing research and teaching in applied technologies for energy,[29] aluminum, boreal forest, genomics and biomedical sciences.

[31][32][33] In addition, Rio Tinto Alcan confirmed in December 2010 investment of 750 million dollars to upgrade its pilot plant in Jonquière AP-60.

The first phase included 38 tanks equipped with new technology, with an estimated production of 60,000 tons of aluminum per year.

According to 2010 data from the Institute of Statistics of Québec (ISQ), the per capita personal income in 2009 amounted to $31,677 versus $31,344 in 2008, a variation of 1.1%.

On January 17, 2011, the company chose Saguenay for the assembly plant of the aircraft Co50, an advanced, high-end propeller plane.

The riding of Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, which includes the boroughs of Chicoutimi and La Baie as well as most of the Le Fjord-du-Saguenay Regional County Municipality, and the riding of Jonquière, which includes the borough of Jonquière as well as the southern part and parts of the Le Fjord-du-Saguenay RCM.

The electoral district of Dubuc, which covers the part of Saguenay as well as the Le Fjord-du-Saguenay RCM, is represented by François Tremblay of the Coalition Avenir Québec.

As a result, North American telephone customers placing calls to Saguenay may not recognize the charge details on their bills.

The University of Quebec at Chicoutimi (UQAC) is located in Saguenay; this francophone campus of the province's network has 6,500 students.

[47] The CSSS de Chicoutimi also specializes in research in primary care medicine and chronic illness and the rehabilitation of neuromuscular disorders.