With enough imagination one could see a big-jawed, crested, horned animal-head as the shape of this province. The 'crest' is the Ungava Peninsula, bounded east by Ungava Bay. Beyond the bay is the 'horn', bounded east by Labrador. That bound drops straight down to the 'mouth'--an indent in the border, then to the 'jaw', which is bounded north by Labrador, and south by the Gulf of St. Lawrence(1).
The tapering Gulf of St. Lawrence and its river interupt the metaphor, but otherwise thr rest of southern Quebec could be considered the animal's 'neck'. The back of the 'head' follows St. James Bay and Hudson Bay north. The base of the neck is the Ottawa River.
Most of this area is within the Canadian Shield, a low, lake-studded plateau, bounded southeast along the St. Lawrence River by the Laurentian Mountains(2). The northernmost fringe of the shield is tundra, and there are dramatic sea side cliffs along Hudson Bay.
Exceptions to this pattern are: I. Near the head of James Bay is a small piece of the Arctic(3) Coastal Plain; II. Going downstream until about Québec City the valley lands near the St. Lawrence River(4) are part of the continent's interior lowlands. III. The Appalachian Mountain system extends along the Quebec-New Hampshire and Québec-Maine borders to the end of the Gaspé(5) Peninsula where they are known as the Notre Dame(6) range.
One can divide Québec conveniently by a line that is an extension of Labrador's southern border, connecting to the Eastmain River, which flows to James Bay. North of this line a majority of the people speak Inuktitut(7), though one in three of these also learn French. The others are monolingual.
South of this line about nine in ten speak French as a first language, with most of the remainder English-speakers. About a third are bilingual in these two languages.
Most everyone is Christian, Roman Catholic most commonly, Protestant a distant second place.
There is one large city, Montréal, on an island in the St. Lawrence River not far from the province's southwest corner.
Northern Québec
Southern Québec
(1) Laurent in French.
(2) the Laurentides in French.
(3) Arctic here is not meant to imply that the lands are anywhere near the Arctic Circle, nor that the Hudson Bay is part of the Arctic Ocean; it is generally considered Atlantic; the area is however frigid.
(4) North America's fourth longest.
(5) Officially de la Gaspésie.
(6) Translates as Our Lady, a Christian religious term.
(7) The language of the Inuit.