It is the administrative center of La Haute-Yamaska Regional County Municipality and is the second most populous city in The Eastern Townships after Sherbrooke.

One of the town's main attractions is the Granby Zoo, and its well-known Lac Boivin fountain, also a notable landmark of the area.

Over time, this land was traversed by Indigenous peoples, whose presence was intertwined with the area’s nomadic history.

Subsequently, on January 29, 1803, Colonel Henry Caldwell and his 97 associates were granted the Township of Granby by the Executive Council of Quebec.

The township’s first settler, John Horner, arrived in 1813 and established a sawmill adjacent to the Yamaska River.

[10] Granby received official incorporation as a municipality in the year of 1816, marking its status as a town in 1971.

Field areas have been exploited for agricultural use and the North Yamaska river's flow has been used for its hydraulic energy since the construction of a first dam in 1815 by large industrial companies; the use of dams along the stream has provoked the formation of a large shallow swamp, called Lac Boivin, often cited as one of Granby's landmarks.

[11] Granby is a flat region located approximately halfway between Montreal and Sherbrooke along Autoroute 10; historically a land covered by forests and prairies, it has transformed into an urbanized core surrounded by fields and suburban neighborhoods.

[8] It connects to nearby villages by a network of roads and has two access points from the highway at exit 68 (through Saint-Alphonse-de-Granby) and 74 (via Bromont).

The largest visible minority groups were Black (1.8%), Latin American (1.6%), Arab (0.8%), and West Asian (0.5%).

In 1997, the franchise relocated to Sydney, Nova Scotia and became the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles.