ABSTRACT
A series of fires – in 1682, 1690, and 1759 – gradually led to new approaches to Quebec City’s urban legislation. Looking at legislation in seventeenth-century Quebec City, our chapter focuses on the rules written to eradicate the great damage caused by fire, to enable us to discuss how they reflect different approaches to the notion of risk. If the hearth was once the symbolic core of a home, these shifting attitudes to the management of the risk of fire reflect different social, cultural, and legal dimensions of the desire to mitigate risk, which in turn impact the shape and quality of urban environments.
