Quiévrain

Quiévrain is a municipality in the province of Hainaut in Wallonia, Belgium, on the border with France. It covers about 21 square kilometres and consists of the districts of Audregnies, Baisieux and Quiévrain itself; in 2006 it had a little over 6,500 inhabitants. The town is the border crossing on the old main railway line between Paris and Brussels, which is why Belgians jokingly call France outre-Quiévrain, meaning beyond Quiévrain, and the French use the same phrase for Belgium. In 1848, shortly after the French Revolution of that year, a group of Belgian workers who had been living in Paris and were encouraged to return home and overthrow the monarchy travelled by train as the so-called Belgian Legion; the first group was stopped and disarmed at Quiévrain on 26 March 1848. At the end of the First World War the town was liberated by the Canadian Expeditionary Force on 7 November 1918 and is the starting point of the Canadian Route of Remembrance in Belgium.