Port-Cartier, town, Côte-Nord region, eastern Quebec province, Canada. It lies on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River estuary, at the mouth of the Rochers River. Originating in 1918 as a small sawmilling community known as Shelter Bay, it was transformed into a modern ocean port 26 miles (42 km) southwest of Sept-Îles by the Quebec Cartier Mining Company in the 1950s and ’60s. Port-Cartier is now the southern terminus of a railway from Gagnon, the centre of the Lac-Jeannine iron ore-mining region. Its man-made harbour, from which the ore concentrates are exported, was opened in 1961. Inc. 1958. Pop. (2006) 6,758; (2011) 6,651.