Drummondville

Drummondville is a city in the Centre-du-Québec region of Quebec, located east of Montreal on the Saint-François River. The population as of the Canada 2021 Census was 79,258. The mayor of Drummondville is Stéphanie Lacoste. Drummondville is the seat of Drummond Regional County Municipality, and of the judicial district of Drummond. Drummondville was founded in June 1815 by Lieutenant-Colonel Frederick Heriot. The purpose of the town was to provide a home for British soldiers in the War of 1812, and to guard the Saint-François (St Francis) River against American attacks. The town was named after Sir Gordon Drummond, the Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada between 1813 and 1816. The construction of the Hemmings Falls hydro-electric dam in 1920 brought a new wave of industrial growth to the Drummondville area. Several outlying municipalities have been amalgamated into Drummondville since the 1950s: 1955: Saint-Joseph de Grantham, Saint-Jean-Baptiste 1966: Drummondville-Ouest 1982: Drummondville-Sud 1993: Grantham 2004: Saint-Nicéphore, Saint-Charles-de-Drummond, Saint-Joachim-de-Courval In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Drummondville had a population of 79258 living in 36727 of its 37931 total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of 75423. With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021. In 2021, Drummondville was 92.7% white/European, 5.6% visible minorities and 1.7% Indigenous. The largest visible minority groups were Black (2.1%), Latin American (1.5%) and Arab (1.3%). French was the mother tongue of 93.8% of the population. The next most common first languages were Spanish (1.4%), English (1.1%), and Arabic (0.9%). 0.7% of residents listed both French and English as mother tongues, while 0.4% listed both French and a non-official language. 71.9% of residents were Christian in 2021, down from 90.8% in 2011. 64.4% were Catholic, 5.6% were Christian n.o.s, 0.8% were Protestant, and 1.0% belonged to other Christian denominations or Christian-related traditions.