Rivière Magpie (Québec)

The Magpie River (Rivière Magpie, Moteskikan Hipu, Mutehekau Hipu, Pmotewsekaw Sipo) is a river in the Côte-Nord region of Quebec which flows from the Labrador Plateau to empty into the north shore of the Saint Lawrence River east of Sept-Îles, Quebec. The Magpie River is long. It rises near the border between Quebec and Labrador, flows south, and enters Magpie Bay on the Gulf of Saint Lawrence west of Havre-Saint-Pierre. Two of its tributaries are named Magpie West and Magpie East. The central section contains the long Lake Magpie The river is not wide, but fast and turbulent. Its estuary is wide and forms a harbour for fishing boats. The village of Magpie is on the hillside around another small harbor on Magpie Bay west of the river mouth, and is one of the oldest towns on the Côte-Nord. The site was visited from 1849 by Gaspesians from Chaleur Bay who came to fish for cod and Atlantic salmon. The village boomed after the fishing companies Robin & Colas and Le Bouthillier establish facilities there around 1870. The river is named for the Canada jay (Perisoreus canadensis), which the English called "magpie". In the 19th century the local people pronounced in Magpointe. In 1870 Eugène-Étienne Taché's map showed the river as "R. Magpie or La Pie". In 1886 the surveyor Saint-Cyr called it Rivière à la Pie. It is nicknamed La Pie. According to the Abbé Victor-Alphonse Huard, it was also called Girard River after the three Girard brothers who settled in the area around 1849. The Innu have called it by various names, including Moteskikan Hipu, meaning "abrupt", "rocky" or "difficult" river, Mutehekau Hipu which translates as "river where the water passes between the square rocky cliffs" and Pmotewsekaw Sipo which means "river along which one walks among the shrubs". According to the Dictionnaire des rivières et lacs de la province de Québec (1914), On the north coast of the Saint Lawrence, Saguenay County, at 380 miles from Quebec and six miles east of Ouapitagon.