Due to the presence of the chipboards plant called Panval, the biggest industry of the valley, Sayabec is an important regional economic centre.

The municipality's main transportation link is the Quebec Route 132 which loops around the Gaspé Peninsula back towards the Mont-Joli area northwest of Sayabec.

Other sources say that the name is from the Mi'kmaq word siapeg, which means "extension of the lake" or "small gulf".

However, despite the laws of the time, this owner never inhabited nor exploited this territory, and he didn't officially bequeathed it.

Afterwards, the Intercolonial Railway, built from 1870 to 1872, has been an important catalyst for the development of the forest industry in the valley.

He was operating a guard post along Kempt Road to offer relief and lodging to travellers and postilions.

After his death his second wife Marcella Dumas continued to cultivate the land at this place for eight years.

From this moment, more settlers, mainly from Rimouski and Matane counties, moved to Sayabec to work in the sawmills or to clear lands.

From then on the forestry vocation of Sayabec was set and more people came to work in the sawmills then to settle as farmers.

This mill was destroyed by fire the next year, and John Fenderson built a new sawmill for timbers and shingles as well as a plant for wood finishing.

The catholic parish had been canonically erected on November 29, 1894, and the first priest was Joseph-Cléophas Saindon, beginning on October 2, 1896.

The parish municipality had been officially created on April, 1st 1895 under the same name of the mission established five years before.

Compagnie électrique d'Amqui held the exclusivity on the electric network for a 25 years period in exchange of providing street lightning.

In 1927 Sainte-Paule, which was until then a mission of the catholic parish of Sayabec, separated to form its own municipality.

On January 5, 1976 the municipality office had been sat up in the current city hall, which was an old Daughters of Jesus residence bought by the Matapédia School District.

In 1968 eight HLMs had been built under a program of Société d'habitation du Québec (Quebec Housing Corporation).

Following a governmental decree of July 1, 1986 Sayabec had to close its municipal opencast dump, which opened in 1951.

The Crown corporation Rexfor and the German firm Kunz were the two main shareholders of this plant named Panneaux de la Vallée shortened into Panval.

Doctor Kunz himself attended this mass, and stated that this religious celebration was a first between all his plants around the world.

In 1989 Panval employed 425 full-time employees, and occupied 62,700 sq m. More than 1,000 trucks by month served the plant.

Sayabec is located to the south of Saint Lawrence River on the Gaspé Peninsula in the Matapédia Valley.

Bordering municipalities are Saint-Moïse to the west, Val-Brillant to the east, Saint-Cléophas to the south and Sainte-Paule to the north.

It includes mainly Malcolm and Squaw Lakes as well as Blanche, Arthur, Edouard and Sauvages Rivers.

Intercity buses of Orléans Express serve Sayabec, using the Route 132 in direction of Rimouski and Matapédia, Quebec.

Sayabec was the first village of the province of Quebec to adopt macadam roads as soon as 1910, before the arrival of asphalt on the market.

Centre de services scolaire des Monts-et-Marées operates Francophone schools.