Plains of Abraham
Listen at the stop, then read the transcript and follow the sources behind the story.
Listen
Transcript
The Plains of Abraham are remembered for the battle of 13 September 1759, when British forces under James Wolfe defeated a French army led by Louis-Joseph de Montcalm outside Québec's walls. Both commanders were mortally wounded.
The popular shorthand—“one battle and Canada became British”—is too simple. Québec surrendered soon afterward, but Montréal held until 1760, and the wider Seven Years' War continued until the Treaty of Paris in 1763 confirmed France's cession of Canada to Britain.
The field's name refers not to the biblical Abraham, but to Abraham Martin, a seventeenth-century resident associated with land in this area.
Later generations turned the battlefield into a national commemorative landscape and urban park. Defeat did not eliminate French Canada. In some ways, surviving defeat became central to its identity.