The Story of Canada: A History for Young Readers, PDF

ie ¥nee  e Imagine life a thousand years ago inside a smoky Viking hous at windswept L’Anse aux Meadows. Meet fourteen-year-old Madeleine, whose quick thinking saved Fort Verchéres in 1692. Experienc...

ie ¥nee  e Imagine life a thousand years ago inside a smoky Viking hous at windswept L’Anse aux Meadows. Meet fourteen-year-old Madeleine, whose quick thinking saved Fort Verchéres in 1692. Experience the excitement of a prairie buffalo hunt, and the first railway journey from coast to coast. Share in the nation’s pride at Expo 67, when we celebrated our first one hundred years. The Story of Canada From the epic journeys into the unknown by the first people who crossed the Bering land bridge thousands of years ago to Roberta Bondar’s landmark voyage into space, The Story of Canada is as vast in scope as the country itself. The Story of Canada is full of unforgettable stories that combine humour (the Loyalist Cow), tragedy (the Halifax explosion), courage (the grit of Marie-Anne Lagimodieére), daring (Martin Frobisher’s search for the Northwest Passage), and vision (the discovery of insulin). Authors Janet Lunn and Christopher Moore tell the country’s story through rich narrative, recreations of daily life, folk tales, and fascinating facts. The book is splendidly illustrated with original paintings by Alan Daniel, as well as several hundred historical photographs, maps, paintings, posters, and cartoons. The result is a highly readable history that is as beautiful as it is informative, an essential reference for every Canadian family.  mT Ho Cy ah 3 ETS O JANET LUNN * CHRISTOPHER MOORE Illustrated by ALAN DANIEL — igs  For Elizabeth, Liam, Kieran, and Joe — born during the writing of The Story of Canada Text copyright © 1992, 1996 Janet Lunn and Christopher Moore Original illustrations copyright © 1992 Alan Daniel unless otherwise credited All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means - graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval systems — without the prior written permission of the publisher, or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, without a licence from the Canadian Reprography Collective. Care has been taken to trace ownership of copyright material contained in this book. The publishers will gladly receive any information that will enable them to rectify any reference or credit line in subsequent editions. See pp. 312-13 for full picture credits. Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Lunn, Janet. The story of Canada ISBN 1-895555-32-9 (bound) ISBN 1-895555-88-4 (pbk.) 1. Canada — History — Juvenile literature. I. Moore, Christopher. II. Daniel, Alan. Histide: FC172.L85 1992 j971 C90-093081-0 F1008.2.L85 1992 The Story of Canada is a joint venture between: TER BOKS Lester Publishing Limited and ___ Key Porter Books Limited 56 The Esplanade 70 The Esplanade Toronto, Ontario Toronto, Ontario Canada MSE 1A7 Canada MSE 1R2 Printed and bound in Canada 96297 (98 99 (554550200 Page 1: A newsboy, about 1900. Opposite: The Young Reader. Ozias Leduc.  To the Reader We have called this book The Story of Canada, but we know no book has room for all the stories of Canada. We hope you find something of yourself in the tales we have told — and go on to discover more stories of Canada for yourself. The Authors  Chapter 1 A Hundred Centuries 8 Chapter 2 Strangers on the Coast 22 Chapter 3 74 Habitants and Voyageurs =~ 44 ) Chapter 4 The Colonists 76 Chapter $ The Great Northwest 12 Chapter 6 Mountains and Oceans 136  Chapter 7 Confederation Days 160 Chapter 8 Sunny Ways 194 Chapter 9 Stormy Times 220 Chapter 10 The Flying Years 256 Northern Voyagers 301 Chronology / 304 Acknowledgments / 311 Index / 314  i tess Heit ae ts i 4 iH a ere aeEa a2a = aaay= Sere cea wes ree S i es 10 Jie rieae: Soul BORshe ay OR MAP TD A GN s CA T HAD BEEN COLD FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS, SO COLD THAT SNOW barely melted in the brief summers. During the Ice Ages, blue-white rivers of ice flowed over the northern parts of the world. They buried almost every part of the land. Here and there a mountain peak or high plateau rose above the ice, but only the very highest, for the glaciers were thousands of metres thick. As they moved, they ploughed the ground like mighty bulldozers, scraping the rock bare. They pushed gravel and stone ahead of them, flattening hills, filling valleys, and carving the bedrock itself. Previous pages: The glaciers must have been beautiful, but only a As the glaciers melted more cruising hawk could have seen their jagged crevasses or the than a hundred centuries ago, chill fogs around their grinding, roaring edges. In all those wandering tribes discovered the centuries when ice covered the land, no forests, no plants, land that would one day be no animals, and no people could live in the country that is Canada. The hunters in this now Canada. picture have used fire to trap a About twenty thousand years ago, the climate grew woolly mammoth in a swamp warmer. Slowly the glaciers began to shrink in the sun- at the glacier’s edge. The smoke shine. Where their farthest edges had reached, they left has attracted the attention of heaped-up mounds of gravel. Their melting ice poured into another family, who race to cold lakes, and rivers were born to carry the water away. join in the kill. Seeds blew over the muddy, ploughed-out earth and took root where they fell. Plants, shrubs, and forests began to grow again. Animals came into the new country to graze and hunt. Fish swam into the rivers. The shoreline of Grise Fiord, the location of Canada’s most northerly Inuit community, conjures up visions of the Ice Age, thousands of years ago. Hunting Dinosaurs in Alberta Seventy-five million years ago, steamy forests and warm seas covered many parts of Canada, and dinosaurs roamed the land. They were mostly big animals - few were smaller than humans, and a few giants weighed as much as fifty tonnes. Many were peaceable herbivores, or plant-eaters, who grazed in herds. However, it was the fierce Carnivores, or meat- eaters, with their long talons and sharp teeth, who gave the group its name of dinosaur, which means terrible lizard. After dominating the and towers called hoodoos. badlands of Alberta have world for millions of years, “IT was Climbing up a steep become one of the world’s the dinosaurs suddenly died rock face about 400 feet great dinosaur “hunting out about 65 million years high,” he said years later. grounds.” Dinosaur ago. It was only 150 years (That’s about 120 metres.) Provincial Park has been ago that scientists first “T stuck my head around a declared a World Heritage began to suspect they had point and there was this Site by the United Nations. ever existed. skull leering at me. It gave Today visitors come from In 1884, scientist and me a fright.” all over the world to the explorer Joseph Tyrrell was The skull was the first Royal Tyrrell Museum of studying the geology of of many dinosaur fossils Paleontology to gaze at the Alberta’s badlands, a strange that Tyrrell found in the enormous bones - and the landscape where the Red badlands, including one now very small petrified dinosaur Deer River has eroded the called “Albertosaurus,” after eggs sometimes found ground into cliffs, gullies, the province. Since then, the with them. 12 Cel eae Se la Opahe ai © F CG A N A DTA There came a time during the melting of the glaciers when the Great Lakes swelled into one vast inland sea. Another shallow sea covered much of the Prairies. Centuries after that, the western plains were a desert where few animals could live. In some places, rising seas flooded in over the coasts. In others, the land sprang up higher as it shook off its burden of ice. There were warmer times when forests crept north across the subarctic tundra, and cooler times when the treeless tundra pushed the forest south again. First Peoples The first people to arrive were as old and as new as the land itself. As the glaciers retreated and the land emerged, they came across from Asia in dug-out or skin-covered boats, or on foot over a bridge of land that joined the continents. As the ice loosened its grip, people made themselves part of the new land. They hunted woolly mammoths and long- horned buffalo in the shadow of the glaciers. They learned the best places to hunt, and found the best places to shelter. They discovered where the power of the spirits was strongest. Ten thousand years ago — a hundred centuries back in time — families, bands, and tribes of the Native people of Canada were already at home. These first people mastered the skills they needed in every place they settled. On the ocean shores, they harvested the riches of the rivers and the sea. On the plains, they grew expert in hunting the buffalo. In the The early Native peoples left evergreen forests, they learned to track woodland animals. traces of their artistry on Wherever they lived, they sought out every tasty nut or the land itself, carving masks berry or medicinal herb, every sheltered spring or creek, in living trees or painting every outcropping of flint for arrow and spear heads. and carving images called Many hundreds of lifetimes is enough time for many “petroglyphs” on stone. The changes. Thousands of years ago, there were people who petroglyphs shown here are from travelled in skin-covered canoes south along the Atlantic Sproat Lake, Vancouver Island. coast from what we now call Labrador. Where Ontario is today, there were people who buried their dead in earth  Peopling the Americas a hundred centuries ago, the ancestors of the Native peoples of the Americas came to these continents from Asia. t They hunted mammoths, tigers, camels, and other 14 Si a Oe ayy OF Cy Ag NE was A Medicine Wheels mounds that twined about the landscape like fifty-metre- long snakes. Some groups of people would leave one A brave, wise chief had died. homeland to find another far away. To honour him, the people The first people became many nations, each with its who loved him began to pile own ways of doing things, its own leaders, and its own stones into a cairn ona legends and heroes. Across Canada they spoke at least fifty hilltop. Around the cairn, different languages. The Dene of the Northwest could not they laid out stone lines and understand the Cree of the East, and those who spoke circles. This became a place Salish on the Pacific coast would never have heard Micmac of power. Long afterwards, from the Atlantic. newcomers to the western plains found the stone circle. Wondering what it might Centuries of Changes mean, they called it a “medicine wheel.” Over those hundreds of lifetimes and thousands of years, There are more than the Native nations of Canada discovered and invented fifty of these mysterious many things to make their lives better. People of the Pacific landmarks in Alberta and Northwest began to spear and net the salmon that Saskatchewan, often in high migrated up the rivers once a year. They mastered the art and hard-to-reach places. of smoke-drying their catch, so that they could store up all Some are circular, some have the food they needed for the whole year. Such wealth freed straight lines pointing out them from a constant search for food. It gave them time to from the centre, and one produce beautiful works of art, such as the totem poles that includes an outline of a stood tall over their cedar houses. human figure. Some may People of the woodlands around the Great Lakes began point to the constellations of to make clay pots and bowls to store and cook their food stars, others may honour the in. They decorated every piece with elaborate designs. spirit of the buffalo. Some of The Iroquoian people of that territory became farmers, the medicine wheels surely clearing and tilling the fields and planting the corn kernels mark the death of a single that produced fat ears of sweet corn in the hot summers. leader, perhaps quite Although the Iroquoians still hunted and fished, it was recently, but others have their fields of corn — and beans and squash, too — that kept been visited regularly for them well fed. They lived in villages of thousands of five thousand years. people, close by their fields. The people of the Pacific Northwest discovered an extinct volcano, Mount Edziza. Its lava had hardened into a glassy black rock called obsidian that was perfect for knife blades and spear points. For centuries, the people traded obsidian down the Pacific coast, east to the Prairies, and AZ ioe eeNG DL). RE 1D Ce Nee len) e OR [ok 15 north to the land we call Yukon. Across the continent, Native peoples maintained traders exchanged other useful goods. They traded the a vigorous trade long before copper they found on Lake Superior, the shells they Europeans came to this continent. gathered along the Atlantic coast. Later, as people made These Seneca traders (with the pottery and grew vegetables and tobacco, they traded high, cropped hair) have brought those, too. As the centuries passed, the nations came to corn and tobacco to exchange for know each other as nations do today, as allies or rivals, as the birchbark canoes crafted by trading partners, as neighbours. Ojibwa master builders. Chiefs and Heroes Hundreds of years ago, before any Europeans came to Canada, a child called Dekanahwideh was born by the Bay of Quinte on the north shore of Lake Ontario. At his birth, his mother had avision that her son would plant the Tree of Peace among the Iroquoian nations. When Dekanah- wideh grew up, he set forth to fulfil his destiny. According to the Iroquois stories, Dekanahwideh crossed Lake Ontario in a canoe of stone, and began spreading his message of peace. At Onondaga, Dekanah- wideh planted his Tree of Peace, a giant white pine whose N~ eaeca 18 errete St ae Ome Keeper, Oar ADOA ING A CV branches touched the sky and whose roots reached out to all the world. Above the tree an eagle circled night and day, spying out any danger that might threaten the peace. Beneath the tree lay a pit where Dekanahwideh threw the weapons of war. He brought five nations together — the Mohawk, the Oneida, the Onondaga, the Cayuga, and the Seneca — to form a confederacy. “Live together,” he said, “like families in a single longhouse, its rafters extending to shelter you all.” The mothers of the five nations chose fifty chiefs for a great council. Dekanahwideh gave them the law that has governed the People of the Longhouse ever since. His followers — the people we call Iroquois — called him Peacemaker. They still attempt to follow his law and his teaching. Native artists of the Woodland Dekanahwideh is one of the very first heroes we can nations of Ontario have always name in the story of Canada, but every Native nation been inspired by the changing, revered the women and men who founded it or led it to teasing, guiding spirit Nanabush. greatness. On the Pacific coast they remember the great warrior Nekt and his fortress of Kitwanga, high above the Skeena River. Among the Hurons of southern Ontario, one leader after another took the proud name Atironta. There were spirit heroes, too. There were tricksters — Raven on the Pacific coast, the old man Napi on the plains, and Nanabush in the spruce forests. Sometimes tricksters helped and taught the people, sometimes they teased and tested them. There were giants like Glooscap on the Atlantic shore — when he lay down to sleep, Glooscap piled up Minagoo (we call it Prince Edward Island) for a pillow. Spirits ruled the animals, too. They brought animals to the hunters, but they could take the animals away if the people offended them. Spirits also gave guidance, speaking in dreams and visions to those who sought them. Some men and women earned the power to visit and talk with the spirits and learn ways to heal the sick. Around the fire, on long winter nights, storytellers taught the young and reminded the adults of the spirits all around them. Elders passed along the history and the wisdom that guided each nation.  eee Ue Nee DR Be D Gate teste. Uae. oR eS 19 A Northern Passage In several waves, over thousands of years, explorers came from Asia into the Arctic. The first Arctic pioneers followed caribou and muskox into the North about four thousand years ago. They lived hard lives. They had no dogs to hunt with them and pull their sleds. They did not even have lamps to light their skin tents. But gradually they learned how to live better in this unforgiving land. They learned that On the taiga, “the land of little snow houses would keep them warmer in winter than skins. sticks,” people and animals alike They braved the seas in skin-covered boats, catching fish and headed for shelter when winter's seals. They carved lamps from soapstone and burned seal oil blast came down. Dene people in them for heat and light. They carved many other things moved from camp to camp, from the soft stone, to show the magic and power that were carrying their few possessions in the land. Often they carved the powerful white bears of and relying on the land and on the North. They hunted these bears — but they knew that their skills to provide for them. Details: a girl’s embroidered hood and a drinking tube.  Te Oe oka an Ov rk Co ATE De AcesN polar bears also hunted them. The people hoped the magic in their carvings would keep them safe. The people called Inuit came into the Arctic from the west long after these first arrivals, and they were better prepared than those who had come before. They had skilfully made harpoons. Out on the ice, an Inuit hunter might crouch all day at a breathing hole, harpoon in hand, waiting for a seal to pop up. When the hunter struck, the The Magical Art of sharp point would come off the harpoon shaft easily. But a Vanished People the point was attached to a float by a piece of twine, so the seal’s body could not sink back through the hole in the ice A thousand years ago, as the and be lost. With float harpoons and snow houses, Inuit Inuit came into what is now families made the Arctic into a good home. They travelled Arctic Canada, they found over the snow and ice on dogsleds in winter, and their people they called Tunit kayaks and umiaks carried them through open water in living there. Were the Tunit the brief summer. conquered, killed, or driven The Inuit hunted whales in the Arctic Ocean. A away, or did they give up thousand years ago, the climate was warmer than it is their own customs and adopt now. Whales found open water through northern channels Inuit ways? No one knows. far into the Arctic, and Inuit whalers followed them. Here and there across the In a few generations, Inuit explorers discovered all of Arctic, archeologists find the the Arctic region and made it their home. Did they fight remains of the Tunit people’s with the people who were there before them? In Inuit camps. Because the first tales, the Tunit, as they called the earlier people, simply camps studied were near went away. Cape Dorset, Baffin Island, The Inuit made the last great Native migration across archeologists call the Tunit Canada. By the time they had settled the North, Canada’s the Dorset people. The Tunit first nations had made their homes in every part of the or Dorset people knew how land: the lush raincoast, the dry shortgrass prairie, the to survive in the Arctic, but northern evergreen forest, the woodlands and cornfields of what impresses the archeolo- the Great Lakes, the bays and inlets of Atlantic Canada, gists most is the sculptures and the Arctic islands. they left behind. The Like the people in every other part of Canada, the Inuit carvings are small, skilfully of a thousand years ago were explorers and adventurers, made - and strange. The always learning new magic, new ways to live with the land. Dorset people are gone, but Then, just about the time the Inuit reached the Atlantic the power of their art is still shores, other explorers came from the east, across the haunting. Atlantic Ocean from Europe. They too had many skills, and much to learn about the continent.  He UN DR A Day in the Arctic, Seven Hundred Years Ago A skin-covered boat with a soft glow. She and the to the parka of the youngest called an umiak threads its grandmother have taken off child, to keep her safe from way through the narrow their outdoor furs. As the evil. The grandfather picks channels of the High Arctic room grows warm, the small up his bone shaper and islands. The women are children run around naked. works on his carving of a paddling, while children and When the men return, they stone seal. As he works, he dogs sit at their feet. The feed their dogs some of the tells the story of Sedna, the men follow, riding the waves fish they have caught. Then woman who lives beneath in swift kayaks. They are all they come inside, taking off the sea. She has power over wearing clothes of caribou their furs and hugging the the whales and seals, and she skin, with the soft hair children. Soon everyone is rewards hunters who respect warm against their skin and dipping fingers into the the spirits of the animals the supple hide facing the fragrant pot of sealmeat they hunt. chilly breeze that whips up and oil the women have The children try to stay the water. prepared. awake to hear the end of Later, in their summer After the meal, the mother the story, but they soon shelter of arched whale- picks up the qulittaq, the drift into sleep, tucked into bones, turf, and skins, the outside layer of the parka their furs on the sleeping women work around the she is making. She pieces platform. The wind outside cooking pot. (Snow houses together different kinds of is icy cold, the land stark are only for winter.) The fur in an intricate design, and treeless. The late mother has filled and lit the beautiful as well as warm. summer days are already kudlik, the soapstone lamp, The aged grandmother is short, and soon the night which brightens the shelter attaching good-luck charms will last all winter long. 24 Teo S™ ae) eka O Ff CA PNA EDS A N A DAY IN LATE SUMMER, A THOUSAND YEARS AGO, LEIF ERICSSON gripped the tiller of his wave-skimming ship. There it was, rising from the ocean like a great humpback whale: Bjarni’s western land! Leif Ericsson’s people were Norsemen from Scandinavia, in the north of Europe, and everyone in Europe feared them. From Russia to the Mediterranean Sea, the fierce Norsemen went raiding in their dragon-prowed longships. Their word for raiding, viking, became the name by which they were known. The Norsemen were bold explorers, too. At a time when most European sailors scarcely dared go beyond their own shores, the Norsemen had settled Iceland. Leif’s own father, the outlaw Eric the Red, had sailed farther west to discover Greenland. Later that year, a merchant named Bjarni Herjolfsson, sailing to Greenland, had been caught by a howling storm. Carried far to the west, he had sighted a forested land, When he finally reached the Greenland port, the story he told fascinated Leif. Leif, whose friends called him Leif the Lucky, was a big fellow, adventurous but also shrewd and careful. He bought Bjarni’s ship, put it in good repair, and went with his crew in search of the unknown land. Leif was as lucky as his friends said, for now he had found Bjarni Herjolfsson’s land. Early one morning, the weary, salt-caked adventurers waded ashore on an island off this new coast. “They touched the dew with their hands,” wrote a Norse skald, or storyteller, in Saga of the Greenlanders, “and they thought they had never known anything to taste so sweet.” The Norsemen had come to North America. When they pulled their ship ashore on the mainland , Leif’s men found a land that was everything they had Previous pages: hoped for. Salmon “bigger than any they had ever seen The crew of a Portuguese fishing before” ran in the rivers. Deep forests covered the hills. boat, sheltering from a storm Soon after they arrived, Tyrker, a German who had sailed on a summer day in 1500, is with Leif, decided to go exploring. When he returned, he startled by the arrival of Micmac was brandishing what looked like grapes and vines. What traders eager to exchange their a marvellous country, far richer than cold Greenland! pelts for the newcomers’ wares. Leif named it Vinland the Good and decided to spend  S IR RAGIN #G VE -R -S Where Was Vinland? To visit the only place in Canada where we know Vikings lived, travellers follow the long road up Newfoundland’s Great Northern Peninsula to archeologists discovered the It may have been one of the L’Anse aux Meadows, at the ruins of a Norse settlement places where Thorfinn and tip of the island. In 1961, there. L’Anse aux Meadows Gudrid wintered, maybe has been named a World even where Snorri was born. Heritage Site by the United But grapes never grew Nations. It is famous as one at the northern tip of of the first places where the Newfoundland, and L’Anse people of Europe and North aux Meadows rarely has a America bridged an ocean winter without frost. Leif’s and met one another. Vinland may still be Was L’Anse aux Meadows waiting for some lucky Leif Ericsson’s Vinland? archeologist to discover. Many archeologists say no. the winter. He set the men to building huts. The saga says there was no frost that winter, and the cattle were able to browse outdoors. The following spring, Leif loaded his ship with timber and sailed back to Greenland. Soon there were new expeditions setting out for Vinland. Leif’s brother Thorvald led one the next year. But his expedition was not as lucky as Leif’s. One day Thorvald and his men found strange men sleeping under upturned kayaks. The Norsemen killed eight of the Native men, but one escaped and soon returned with many more men in kayaks. Thorvald’s men fought them from their longship, sheltering behind a row of shields, but an arrow flew between the shields and struck Thorvald. He realized that he was going to die. “We have found a good country,” he said, “but we will not be able to benefit from it.” His men buried him on a high headland and went home. 26 Dare Sy Oma & Oar Cosa SNA De A Thorfinn Karlsefni led a large fleet from Greenland to the new land a year or so later, carrying 250 men and women. They spent several years there, living in houses of sod and stone to keep out the cold winds that raged across the headland. Their sheep and goats grazed on the natural meadows. They made rough clothing from the sheep’s wool and drank nourishing goat’s milk. The first winter, Thorfinn’s wife, Gudrid, gave birth to a baby boy named Snorri — the first European child born in North America. The winter was harsh. People grew hungry and sick, and they fought with each other. They too met the Native people of the land. They called them Skraelings, and fought with them. The Skraelings fought back, and soon the settlers were afraid to stay in this new land. Snorri was Norse fighting men valued three years old when he returned to Greenland. bravery and laughed at death, After that, Norse sailors seldom visited the land west of but they did not always win their Greenland. The seas were rough, the climate was getting battles. In North America they colder, and the Skraelings fought hard to defend their land. could not defeat the Skraelings. In Greenland, the cold and lonely Norse settlements slowly dwindled away, defeated by the worsening climate. The Norse people retreated to Iceland, or the countries of their ancestors: Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. So the Vikings went no more to Vinland the Good, and remembered it only in the sagas the skalds told in the great halls at night. Not long after the Norse had abandoned Vinland the Good for ever, Inuit in their kayaks began exploring the coast of Labrador, the places where Leif and Thorvald had been. It would be hundreds of years before Europeans returned to the shores of Canada. The Explorers About five hundred years after Leif Ericsson’s time, Native people must have stood among the trees along the coast of Newfoundland, watching in astonishment as a sailing ship came up over the horizon, its grey sails waving like the wings of a great wooden bird. Native people had been living on the Atlantic shores See Ree ANG, 5 for about nine thousand years. They understood the land These Beothuk men are heading and the sea and how to live well from both. Micmacs, for Funk Island, Newfoundland, Maliseets, and Abenakis shared the mainland and the to gather birds’ eggs. Their bodies islands south of the great river that would later be called smeared with red ochre, they the St. Lawrence. North of the river lay the country of the brave the rough Atlantic in their Montagnais. On the island of Newfoundland lived the distinctive high-sided canoe. Beothuk. Farther to the north was the territory of the Inuit. _ Detail: bone ornaments found In winter and spring, when floating ice packs from the in Beothuk sites; their purpose Arctic came drifting and grinding along the shore, people is unknown. lived inland, in the forests, taking shelter in skin-covered wigwams. Dressed in bearskin cloaks and beaver furs, they hunted moose, deer, caribou, and small game. When summer came, they moved to bays along the coast. There they wore cooler deerskin clothes, or nothing at all in the hottest weather. They caught salmon and eels in the river and gathered clams and mussels by the shore. Although the different tribes spoke different languages, they shared quite a few words and they understood each other’s ways. Then, on a spring day in 1497, a ship called Mathew, commanded by a man named John Cabot, reached their shores from Europe. What made European sailors set out across the oceans of the world? Europe had changed since Leif Ericsson’s day. Learning had spread. Ships now plied the coasts of Europe, and adventurers gazed at maps and wondered what lay beyond. Some five hundred years after the Norsemen had - ——- —-- Davis, 1585 -—- — — — — — Frosisner, 1576 — Hupson, 1610 —— 30 Vee tees S- Ose hay Omun G A DA AON ventured to Vinland, Christopher Columbus sailed from Spain, out into the Atlantic. Sailors and navigators knew the world was round, and Columbus thought that if he sailed west, he should reach the Far East — the home of rare and precious spices treasured by Europe. Instead of China and the Spice Islands of the East, he found another land blocking the way — the Americas. It was a new world to Europeans, though millions of Native North and South Americans had called it home for a hundred centuries. How Sailors Found Five years after Columbus, John Cabot set out from Their Way Bristol, England, in the Mathew. Taking a more northerly route that he hoped would bring him to the Far East, he Until recent times, sailors found instead the island we call Newfoundland. Cabot had only the wind in their sailed along its coast. Along the rugged, forested shore, his sails to drive them. Any men discovered that they could catch codfish just by navigator worth his pay trailing baskets over the side of the ship. could find the North Star When they returned to England, King Henry VII and judge from it just rewarded Cabot with money and ships, and he set out how far north his ship had once more for another look at his New Found Land. In reached. In daytime, he England they awaited his return, but Cabot and his ships could measure by the sun never came back, and no one ever found out what with instruments called happened to them. astrolabes, backstaffs, and Still, the merchants of Europe remembered those quadrants. After the compass baskets crammed with codfish, and Cabot’s fate did (shown above) was invented not stop fleets of fishing boats from setting out for in the 1100s, a navigator his new land. They found what they were looking could steer a straight course for — and more. Big black whales and white belugas in any direction. spouted and dived in the coastal waters. Walruses, seals, Judging how far east or and sea lions bellowed from the rocks. White clouds of west a ship had travelled seabirds wheeled and shrieked over the cliffs, and fat, was almost impossible. To flightless auks waddled over the islands. The rivers were cross from Europe to Canada, rich with salmon. Off the east coast stretched a vast, sailors headed west until submerged continent the sailors called the Grand Banks. they saw land. The best signs More cod than they had ever imagined swam there. that land was near were the Within a few years, hundreds of ships were heading for flights of birds, the smell the new land every spring. of forests, and the mariner’s The sailors called it many names — Newfoundland, sixth sense. Terre-Neuve, Tierra Nueva — because they spoke English, Gaelic, French, Basque, Spanish, or Portuguese. They The Micmacs of Atlantic fished at Labrador (named for a Portuguese explorer) Canada were among the first and the Strait of Belle Isle. They fished from Cape Breton Native people to encounter the Island. But thousands chose the bays and harbours of newcomers from Europe. They Newfoundland. When Sir Humphrey Gilbert came to traded furs for such items as Newfoundland in 1583, he said he found “men of all these firearms, which became nations” gathered in the harbour at St. John’s. He could part of their culture, just as buy all the food and supplies he needed “as if we had been the European settlers adopted in a city.” But St. John’s and all the other harbours were canoes and snowshoes. only summer colonies, abandoned every fall when the sailors went home with their catch. In 1534, Frangois I, the King of France, sent Jacques Cartier to explore this Terre-Neuve where the fishermen were going. In France, they had heard tales of the Spanish warriors called conquistadores, or conquerors, who had followed Columbus. In Mexico the Spanish had seized the golden empire of the Aztecs, and in Peru they had overthrown the Incas and plundered their treasures. Were there golden empires for the French to find and conquer in the lands beyond Terre-Neuve? Cartier explored and mapped and named, everywhere he went. When he explored the St. Lawrence River, he asked the people he met what they called their land. They answered, “Canada.” The word meant “the village” in their language, but Cartier thought it was the name of the whole country, and he put “Canada” on the map. Days of the Whalers Any summer day in the whipped it away. Hundreds caught up with one, they 1500s, the Labrador harbour of sweating, shouting men drove their harpoons deep of Red Bay was one of the were hard at work. into it. Then, with the busiest places on the coast. Red Bay was a whaling dead whale in tow, they Ships swung at anchor on port. Out in the Strait of struggled back to Red Bay. the choppy waters of the Belle Isle, whalers rowing Fat cauldrons simmered bay. Wharfs, huts, and fast boats called chalupas with thick slabs of blubber, houses crowded the shore. chased the whales that and out poured rich whale Hot ovens belched black migrated through the strait oil. When the oil cooled, smoke, and the sea breeze all summer long. If they the whaling men poured it  f- a spoke a language no one years, whales remained into barrels and loaded the else understood, and they plentiful in Terranova, and barrels aboard waiting lived by the bounty of the the Basques came every galleons. Back home, the oil sea. Once their ancestors spring. But about the time would become lamp fuel and had hunted whales on their Samuel de Champlain came soap and a hundred other own coasts. Now those to Canada to found New useful things. whales were gone, and France, the overhunted These whalers were the whalers came instead to whales were becoming rare Basques, and their home this new land, which they in the Strait of Belle Isle. was the hill country between called Terranova. The day of the Basque Spain and France. They For almost a hundred whalers was ending. 34 ee kleee: Soply One Y Oawy AR N ae Age een At Stadacona When Jacques Cartier sailed into the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1534, word of his arrival spread to the nearby village of Stadacona, which stood high on a cape above the great river (where Quebec City is now). Donnacona’s people had always lived there, planting fields of corn, beans, and squash beyond their longhouses. Now, in his old age, Donnacona had a problem no other chief had faced. There were strangers on the coast, travelling in great wooden houses that moved over the water. They came from the sea. Did they come from the underwater world, where the spirits of the dead dwelt? Although the strangers had not yet come to Stadacona, they had been seen downriver, where the water turned salt. Some years they stayed all summer, fishing and hunting whales. If they were angered, they pointed magic sticks that roared and flamed, and death flew where they pointed. If they were friendly, they offered beautiful beads, and blades stronger than stone. Traders from neighbouring tribes who had met the strangers had shown Donnacona the wonderful gifts they had received. Summer came. Donnacona and his people took their canoes downriver to Gaspé to fish, and there they finally met the strangers. The young men paddled canoes out to the floating vessels, and the strangers gave them mirrors and sharp knives. Then the sailors came ashore and gave every woman alittle bell. Donnacona’s people danced and sang a welcome, but the strangers met this hospitality with rudeness. They put upa tall cross on the shore. Although Donnacona did not know exactly what that meant, he understood that these men were claiming his people’s land as their own. From his canoe, he made an angry speech telling them that this land had been his people’s forever. But the strangers did not seem to understand. The strangers were Jacques Cartier and his men, and they wanted something from Donnacona: his sons, Domagaya and Taignoagny. By signs and gestures, Cartier asked whether the two would go with him to France, S eRe IN GE RS ON rie Ei CG OFAES)1 35 and promised they would come back the next spring. Donnacona did not know where they were going, but he could not stop Cartier from taking them. So Domagaya and Taignoagny sailed away. The tribe went back to Stadacona fearing they would never again see the chief’s sons. A year passed. At last news came to Stadacona that Cartier’s ships had been seen coming up the river. Domagaya and Taignoagny were aboard! Donnacona greeted his sons joyfully and welcomed Jacques Cartier back. Perhaps they would become friends after all. Cartier’s men would bring their gifts, and Donnacona’s people would feed them and give them furs. Other tribes would come to Stadacona from all over the country to trade and share the new magic of the strangers. But Taignoagny and Domagaya soon reported that their year among the French, though exciting, had not been happy. The land across the ocean was huge and rich and the great cities were full of amazing sights, but the people there were cruel. Donnacona also learned from his sons that Jacques Cartier intended to stay and to make this land his own. Meanwhile, Cartier and his men travelled farther upriver and visited a rival village called Hochelaga At Stadacona, (where Montreal is now). Then they returned to spend the in 1535, Chief winter near Stadacona. Donnacona comes When autumn came, Cartier’s sailors were startled and out to meet delighted to see the blazing scarlet and gold woods, but the Jacques Cartier. 36 LE eee, 5 eel Ss OMS aay, OEE A ADA Cy AW winter that followed terrified them. They had never known such snowfalls, never felt such cold, and the food they had brought with them did not keep them strong. One by one, they grew weak and sick with scurvy. Donnacona’s people healed them with tea brewed from spruce bark. In the spring, the weakened, disappointed explorers set sail for home. They had discovered no golden empires in Canada, and no sea passage to the Far East. Yet Stadacona’s troubles were not over. European sailors continued to come from over the sea. The Native people who lived along the river fought over the valuable trade goods the strangers offered, until their way of life was destroyed. When Samuel de Champlain sailed up the St. Lawrence about fifty years later, no one lived at Stadacona. Where there had been bustling villages along the river, Champlain found only meadows. Donnacona never knew of this disaster. At the end of his second trip to Canada, Jacques Cartier had seized the chief and carried him back to France. Donnacona had died there without ever seeing his homeland again. It was as if, by meeting the strangers, Donnacona and all his people — and Stadacona itself — had been dragged off to the underwater world of the dead. Fur Traders Jacques Cartier went home bitterly disappointed. He called the bleak, rocky shores visited by the fishermen “the land God gave to Cain.” The land along the St. Lawrence River looked far better, and once Cartier thought he had found diamonds there, but when he took them to France, everyone laughed — his diamonds were only quartz. After that, few explorers came treasure-seeking in Canada. But the fishermen and whaling men continued to come every summer. Europe was hungry for the cod they caught, and eager for whale oil for lamps and soap. Along the coast, the fishermen met the Beothuk, Micmac, and Montagnais bands who came down from the SiR As Ne G. BAR. Ss ON TTD SE CaO ABS oT 37 forests to the shore each summer. Often the Native people Guided ashore bya fire, merchant and the European fishermen feared and distrusted each fishermen show their wares to other. A Beothuk family in Newfoundland would be Montagnais traders. Native angry when intruders took over their stretch of shoreline. traders did well selling their old A crew of fishermen would be furious when gear they clothes for axes, blankets, cloth, had left behind in the fall disappeared during the winter. Yet and other manufactured goods sometimes Natives and newcomers helped each other. The from Europe. fishermen had iron knives that cut much better than stone, cooking pots made of hard, shiny copper, and warm blankets of bright woollen cloth. The Native people wanted all these things and they had something valuable to offer in return: the cloaks they wore, made from fine, glossy animal furs. Slowly, cautiously, the Native people and the Europeans began to trade. Beaver pelts were the ones fishermen wanted most. “The beaver does everything perfectly,” said one Montagnais trader, when he saw how much the fishermen would give for beaver skins. “It makes kettles, hatchets, swords, knives, and bread. It makes everything.” Gradually those furs drew adventurers, traders, and explorers to Canada, leading them far inland from the New Found Land of the fishermen and the whalers. 38 ac Oe Brey Oar CG A We PAD A Beavers, Beaver Hair, and Beaver Hats To keep a beaver warm and would hold its shape in cold northern waters, longer than any other its hairs are covered with material. Beaver felt made microscopic hooks or barbs fashionable broad-brimmed that trap an insulating layer tricornes, sometimes of air. Long ago, hatters decorated with a feather. learned to shave beaver The best hairs for felt The European fur traders hair off the pelt, chop it up were the short underhairs, who came to Canada wanted finely, and crush it together so early fur traders paid beaver more than any other into a kind of stiff felt that the highest prices for old fur, and these pelts were could be pressed into any furs that had been used as made into hats. Does this shape. It was waterproof cloaks until the long outer mean that everyone in hairs had worn off. At Europe walked around first the Native traders wearing furry hats? Not at laughed and said, “See what all. What the hatters needed treasures they give us for was the hair from the beaver our old clothes.” But they skins, which they used to soon learned to drive make felt. hard bargains. Northern Seas The Northwest Passage! A shortcut to the Far East, to Asia and India, to spices, silks, wealth, and glory. From the time of Cabot and Cartier, every boy in Europe dreamed of sailing west and finding it. Since Canada was in the way, sailors sought the passage farther and farther north. Some explorers refused to believe that whole oceans could be covered with ice, and set out to sail right over the North Pole to Asia. In 1576, the English explorer Martin Frobisher thought he had found the passage, and named it Frobisher’s Strait, but it turned out to be just a bay on Baffin Island. Even the “gold” he thought he had found was worthless. A few years later, another Englishman, John Davis, led four ships with the names Sunshine, Moonshine, Mermaid,  39 Pistol and sword in hand, fighting sailor Martin Frobisher roamed the seas. When he reached Frobisher Bay on Baffin Island, the hunt for gold distracted him from the search for the Northwest Passage. In the end he found neither. 40 hati Sys yO Shay pa eAe Cre AkeyeNisD oA Seeking a passage around North and North Star far into the North. During hot, sunny days America to the Pacific Ocean and at the end of June, his men went ashore and played the riches of Asia, John Davis football with the Inuit. But, winter or summer, ice floes sailed north along the coast of blocked the way through Davis Strait. John Davis never Greenland. Here, his men have found the passage, either. gone ashore to play football with In 1610, twenty-five years later, Henry Hudson a crowd ofInuit. explored a strait that Martin Frobisher had glimpsed. For six weeks, his ship Discovery fought the turbulent waters. Tides fell twelve metres in a few hours, and jagged reefs thrust their teeth out of deep water. Finally, the strait opened up and the crew of the Discovery found themselves sailing into a great salt sea. Hudson thought he had captained his ship through North America and into the Pacific. He set his course for the Spice Islands. But Hudson was mistaken. By October he and the Discovery were still far from the riches of the East. They had sailed into Hudson Bay. There was no Northwest Passage here, and winter was coming on. Twenty-one men spent a cold, fearful winter aboard the Discovery. The ship was trapped in ice and buried in snow. As the men huddled in their cabins, scurvy turned their mouths black and made their teeth fall out, and they had no fresh foods to stop it. They argued and fought all >) leh G BOR Ss ON TE CAOSASS. T 41 winter. When spring finally came, their food was nearly gone, and most of the men believed they would never see their homes again. Hudson’s officers hatched a desperate plot. “Get rid of Hudson and the sick men,” they insisted, “or the rest of us will never get home.” The men hesitated, because mutiny was a terrible crime. Then they struck. Henry Hudson, his son John, and six sailors were driven into the ship’s boat. One more sailor stepped into the boat beside his captain, too loyal to save his life by mutiny. The mutineers sailed away, closing their ears to the cries of their victims, and the Hudsons and the seven others were left to drift in Hudson Bay in the open boat until they died. A few years later, Nicholas Vignau, a French expiorer who was travelling on the Ottawa River, heard tales about a white man who had died by the shores of a bay far to the north. It may have been young John Hudson. Rats, Weeds, and Viruses When fishermen and explorers sailed from Europe to Canada, they brought small stowaways with them. Every ship had rats, and every time a ship was anchored in some sandy cove the rats had a chance to go ashore and discover the New World for themselves. Long before anyone from Europe settled in Canada, the rodents had scattered far and wide across the continent. Rats were not the only animals aboard the ships. Soon pigs, horses, and cattle escaped to run wild in the new land. Plants arrived, too. Before the European ships came to this continent, there was not one dandelion in North America, but seeds crossed the ocean, stuck to a sailor’s baggage or the mud of his boot. Once ashore, plants migrated faster than the humans they had come with. Today, if you collect ten different wild plants in a Canadian field, chances are that five will be the descendants of immigrants.  EAC e sche Ce fish for cod. Unlike other Native people, the Beothuks did not trade furs with the fishermen who came to Newfoundland. The aoe mee moe thieves, and the two groups became enemies. When fishermen settled along the coast, life grew hard for the rae eam ital aio i ehy MMe Ae NAY gathered there. Trapped in the interior, they became hungry and sick. When they ventured out, though, they were shot at. No more than a handful had survived by 1823, when Shawnandithit’s aunt, Demasduwit, died while held captive by the English. Shawnandithit was captured, starving and ill. Her captors named her The Last Beothuk Nancy, and she stayed with them in St. John’s for six Shawnandithit, the last of years. She lived in the home the Beothuk people, died in - Of William Cormack, an St. John’s, Newfoundland, on oq) Ceo mayo aeCe Cachet June 6, 1829. She was about more about her people. twenty-eight years old. PUCBC aati There were never many the stories she told him are Beothuks. Newfoundland almost everything we know could not support many about the Beothuks. There is people. It had no moose and no picture of Shawnandithit. few deer, and although the SU aee tiem ame PUT eee eis Cottey known English painter, is on the shores, they did not of Demasduwit. 5S, LR we Ns GE Rus ON Ty H E 43 Much less welcome immigrants also found their way across the ocean. For thousands of years, Europe had shared its germs and diseases with Asia and Africa. The diseases were deadly, but over the centuries many people had built up some immunity to them. This meant that a disease might not infect everybody, or that it might weaken its victims but not kill them. In the Americas, where these diseases had never existed, no one was immune. Like rats and dandelions, measles and fevers and OSS tuberculosis and smallpox came on the ships. The sailors Fur traders and explorers were and explorers did not know about bacteria and viruses or not the only newcomers to how diseases spread, but spread they did. The microscopic North America. Plants and newcomers passed from tribe to tribe, killing thousands. animals came early and spread In vain, Native healers worked their medicine. In some rapidly. places, everyone in the village sickened and died, leaving too few to bury the dead. Across the Americas, as many as nine out of every ten people may have died from diseases. Nations collapsed. In the early 1600s, Membertou, a very old headman of the Micmac at Port-Royal, in Acadia, could remember back almost to the days when the strangers first came to his land. “In my youth,” Membertou said, “I have seen my people as thickly planted here as the hairs on my head. Since the French mingle with us, we are dying fast.” People in Europe knew little of the destruction they had caused. They were beginning to see North America as an exciting new land, and by the early 1600s they were building permanent settlements. English fishermen began colonies in Newfoundland. Religious pilgrims from England landed in New England. The Dutch founded New Amsterdam, which was later taken over by the English and became New York. English adventurers settled in Virginia, and Spanish in Florida. The French built a colony in Acadia, and a few years later they came again up the St. Lawrence River to found Quebec where Stadacona had once been. But when they returned, North America was a land in mourning. Many of its Native people had died of imported diseases. ba it ee i i ,He ese  46 Teri sr Sarhos Ov Ree y OAR CumAr ING yAs D> CA N 1603, SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN SAILED UP THE ST. LAWRENCE RIVER and gazed at the meadows where Stadacona and Hochelaga had once stood. “You could hardly hope to find a more beautiful country,” he exclaimed. Five years later, he came again. With twenty-eight men, he landed at Quebec, which means “the place where the river narrows” in the language of the Montagnais people who lived along the river. Champlain’s men built a cluster of buildings by the river’s edge, and he named it the Habitation of Quebec. Samuel de Champlain had brought French settlers to Canada to stay. During that first winter, most of these pioneers of Quebec died of cold and scurvy and lack of food. Champlain needed help. The Montagnais brought corn and meat to the Habitation, and they showed Champlain how to boil spruce bark in water to make a cure for scurvy. They also brought furs to trade. Over the years, only the oo - Previous pages: BITA In 1670, Jeanne Mance welcomes Native traders with a feast in the grounds of her hospital in Montreal. The feast is a hearty stew: meat from beavers, bears, even cats and dogs, has gone into the big pot, with corn, grapes, and raisins. Champlain drew this complicated plan of the A Le magazin, | logemens. | N Plattes formes, en facon de ee ; B Colombier. | H Logis du fieur de Cham- | tenailles pour mettre le ca- Habitation he had built at Cc Corps de logis ot font nos plain. non, armes, & pour loger les I La porte de habitation, ot O Jardin du fieur de Cham- uebec in 1 : , ouuriers, il y a pont-leuis. plain. Q 608. This cluster of D aoe corps de logis pour L Promenoir autour de Vhabi- P La cuifine. +7 7°. es ouuriers, tation contenant 10. pieds Q Place deuant l’habitation fur buildings srew into the oldest : ee ee de large iufques fur le bort le bort de la riuiere. a ; utre corps de logis ot eft du fotié. R La grande riuiere de fain permanent French community la forge, & artifans logés. M Foffés tout autour de Vha- Lorens. G Galleries tout au tour des bitation, Pe 393: in North America. The Pirate On the rocky headland home to Seville. In mid- Admiral of Harbour Grace, Easton’s Atlantic, he found the men built a fort to keep storm-battered treasure In 1610, while Samuel de themselves safe from attack. galleons and captured three Champlain was building his When his mood was good, of them. His fortune was Habitation at Quebec, Peter Easton invited fishermen made. He sailed to France Easton, the Pirate Admiral, and colonists to drink and “lived rich” for the rest arrived at Harbour Grace, with him, while he boasted of his days. Newfoundland. of his plans. Soon, he said, Captain Easton never All that summer, Captain he would sail away in returned to Harbour Grace, Easton was the lord of pursuit of Spanish gold. but some of the fishermen Conception Bay. He did as This talk of easy riches who had sailed with him he pleased. He boarded tempted many fishermen. did. Easton had been their fishing boats and trading Five hundred sailors aban- springboard to gold and ships, being cruel or doned the fishing fleet glory, and they chose generous as the mood to join Easton. to forget how he had struck him. He took food, In July 1612, Captain plundered the colonists equipment, and gunpowder. Easton was ready. Witha of Newfoundland. They He took carpenters, whether thousand men and ten ships, preferred to remember the they were willing or not, he sailed away to hunt the Pirate Admiral as a hero, to keep his ships in ships that hauled gold from and they kept the legend fighting trim. Spain’s American empire of Peter Easton alive. When Champlain reached trade in furs would keep his little outpost going. Huron country in 1615, he was Champlain talked with the Native people, travelled with not the first Frenchman to have them, and helped them in their wars. He did not know arrived there. In this picture, how to swim, but he rode bravely in their canoes through young fur trader Etienne Brillé is the wildest rapids. He wanted to endure the hardships they on hand to meet him. Brule took for granted. Everywhere he journeyed, he recorded lived among the Hurons for more what he saw in his maps and diaries. He came to know than twenty years. Canada better than any European explorer ever had before. In July 1615, Champlain set out on his longest voyage in this new country. He was going to the country of the Huron people, more than a thousand kilometres inland, by the shores of a freshwater sea, Lake Huron. For nearly a month, he and his Native guides and companions pushed their way up wild rivers along a route that Native traders had followed for centuries. They carried their goods and canoes over sixty portages and shot as many rapids before they reached Lake Huron. Finally they arrived in the Huron country. Champlain was amazed by what he saw. All the Native people he knew — the Micmac, the Montagnais, the Ottawa, the Algonquin — were nomads and hunters of the wood- lands. In small bands, carrying all they owned, they  vAg@ belie lt Ay NTS aN 1D) Var Over \eeGe Be URES 49 roamed vast territories where they hunted, fished, and gathered plants. The Huron nation was different. In their country Champlain found tilled fields and, just beyond them, a big town surrounded by tall palisades. Crowds of men, women, and children came out to greet him. For Champlain, seeing these towns and fields and crowds of people was almost like being back in France. “The country here is all fertile and a delight to see,” he wrote admiringly. The Corngrowers Instead of moving about in small hunting bands, the Hurons lived in one place. They grew corn, beans, squash, and tobacco in the fields that surrounded their towns. Besides being prosperous farmers, they were courageous warriors and skilful diplomats, and they had become the most powerful Native nation north of the Great Lakes. Laden with corn and tobacco, their trade canoes plied the Great Lakes and the rivers of what are now northern Ontario and Quebec. No sooner had Champlain built his Habitation at Quebec than Huron traders began bringing furs down the long river routes to trade there. In the first town Champlain came to, he saw dozens of sturdy longhouses — each one the home of several families. In the Huron country, he soon learned, there were many towns, and some had as many as 2000 people. Their homeland was a small peninsula on Georgian Bay, in Lake Huron, and more than 20000 people lived there. The Hurons had joined several tribes and towns into a nation, the Huron Confederacy. They had dozens of chiefs, who met in great councils. The chiefs were men, but women also had power because they tended and owned the fields that produced the corn. And women chose the chiefs. The Hurons had one great rival, a confederacy of tribes south of Lake Ontario. These tribes called themselves the People of the Longhouse, but their enemies had long ago given them the name Iroquois, which means rattlesnake. The Hurons and the Iroquois spoke similar languages and In the Iroquoian farming lived the same way of life, but they had been enemies for nations, the fields and crops hundreds of years. Their rivalry grew fiercer after the belonged to the women. Women French arrived. Each feared the other could seize the routes planted them, weeded them, and to the coast and control the trade with the newcomers. The harvested the corn — and kept losers might vanish, the way Stadacona and Hochelaga had away the birds. vanished. That was why there were tall palisades around the Huron towns. And that was why Champlain had come. Atironta, a Huron war leader, had invited Champlain to the Huron country because he wanted the French to fight the Iroquois alongside the Hurons. Champlain could not refuse him. Without the Hurons there would be few furs at Quebec, and without furs there would be no colony. So Champlain’s colony depended on the outcome of the Huron-Iroquois war. That summer Atironta and Champlain travelled through the country, gathering warriors for a raid on the Iroquois. In September, 500 Hurons and a handful of Frenchmen set forth for battle. In a hundred canoes, they crossed Lake Ontario and invaded Iroquois country. Their target was a large Iroquois town crowded with longhouses, surrounded by cornfields, and, like the Huron towns, protected by rows of palisades. Atironta and his warriors attacked, while Champlain and his French companions fired their muskets into the Te ACD Ue eg UN aT Ss A IN| ID) Ver As Ge e Et UL:eR 5 51 village. But the Iroquois defended themselves with skill and bravery, and the attack failed. Champlain was wounded in the knee by an arrow, and the defeated invaders turned homeward, carrying him on their backs. He spent the winter among the Hurons and returned to Quebec in the summer. The French and the Hurons remained allies, for they still needed each other. Traders like Etienne Bralé lived among the Hurons for years, and young Hurons went to live at Quebec. Missionaries went into the Huron country. The French dreamed of converting all the Native people of Canada to their own Christian faith. If the Hurons became Christians, they told themselves, other Native Jesuit missionary Jean de Brébeuf nations would follow. And because the Hurons wanted lived among the Huron people for the friendship of the French, they agreed to be hospitable fifteen years, fought with them to these strange visitors. In a few years, mission houses against the Iroquois, and died stood among the Huron longhouses. Black-robed priests when the Iroquois conquered the were hard at work, learning the Huron language and Huron nation. The Roman preaching Christianity. Catholic Church honours him Father Jean de Brébeuf arrived in the Huron country in as a saint and a martyr. 1626, eager to bring word of his God to the people there. At first Huron life shocked and frightened him. He hated the unfamiliar food and the dark, smoky longhouses. He knew nothing of Huron ways and customs, and even the children laughed at his ignorance. As Brebeuf and his fellow priests slowly learned the Huron language, he began to understand and admire his hosts. He still dreamed of converting them to his faith, but most Hurons preferred their own beliefs. Champlain’s Colony While the missionaries worked among the Hurons, Samuel de Champlain had a colony to build. He wanted much more than a trading post at Quebec. He wanted many people to come from France, to raise families and to build towns and farms and businesses. He was determined to see his colony become a place worthy of the name New 52 oe rier Salt Os ae CE CMAN CAD eA France. He believed it would become large and prosperous, bringing wealth and honour to his master, the King of France. Labourers, artisans, and farmers arrived at the Habitation. Louis and Marie Hébert and their children were the first family to settle. One of their daughters, Anne, became the first bride in New France. The Heberts began growing vegetables and herbs to support themselves and the community. So did a sailor named Abraham Martin, and the place where he started his farm became known as the Plains of Abraham. Champlain’s Habitation grew into the town of Quebec, with homes, a church, warehouses, and a fort. Some colonists were inspired by their religious faith to Samuel de Champlain’s young come. A nun named Marie de I’Incarnation had a vision wife, Hélene, lived most of her that told her to do God’s work in New France. Even though life in Paris, but in 1620 she the son she had borne before becoming a nun beat at her came with him to Quebec and convent door, crying, “Give me back my mother,” Marie set spent four years there. The artist sail for Quebec. She spent the rest of her life in New France, has imagined the welcome the tending the sick, teaching, and praying for the settlers. handful of settlers gave her. A few years after Marie de l’Incarnation arrived, Paul de Eis ve Dw lant AN oS: A N D Vee Ome ame Crt hea Leas 53 Maisonneuve led a group of devout colonists from France to Quebec and on up the river to where Hochelaga had stood. They founded a mission community there and named it Ville-Marie. In time it became the town of Montreal. Samuel de Champlain nurtured his colony devotedly. Over the years, he crossed the Atlantic more than twenty times. Sometimes he would hold council with Native chiefs, then sail to France to beg support from the king, then return to encourage his pioneers at Quebec, then rush back to France to have one of his books published, all within a single year. He was much too busy to spend time with his young wife, Hélene. She had married Champlain when she was only twelve, but she continued to live in France while he was away across the ocean. Hélene visited The coat of arms of New France New France only once, and after four years at Quebec, she was displayed over the gates of went home to spend the rest of her life in Paris. the city of Quebec. When Champlain died at Quebec in 1635, only a few hundred people called New France home, but he had planted the French flag in Canada and created a permanent community of European settlers here. He was the founder of New France. Louis XIV Saves New France In the 1640s the proud Huron nation was in desperate trouble. The war with the Iroquois raged more furiously than ever. Meanwhile, smallpox and fever, unwittingly brought by the missionaries, swept the longhouses, killing half the population. The survivors were grieving and fearful. Some became Christians, hoping the new religion would comfort them. Others held to their own ways, blaming the priests for the sorrows that had come to them. Christian Hurons began to live apart from the others, and the nation became divided. Then, in 1649, the Iroquois invaded the Huron country. They stormed the palisades, clubbed down the defenders, and burned the longhouses and cornfields. The Huron nation collapsed. Some people escaped, but Amid the towns and cornfields of hundreds were killed and even more were taken prisoner, the Huron people near Georgian to be adopted into the Iroquois nation. The Christian Bay, the French missionary priests burned their mission, called Ste-Marie Among the priests built their own little Hurons, and ran for their lives. But after more than twenty community — Ste-Marie Among years among the Huron people, Father Brebeuf was the Hurons. It was destroyed determined to stay with them. Iroquois warriors put him to when the Iroquois attacked death along with Huron warriors they had captured. in 1649. Soon the Iroquois were attacking New France itself. Champlain and his soldiers had helped the enemies of the Iroquois, and the Iroquois intended to teach Champlain’s colonists who the true masters of Canada were. No more furs came down to Quebec. Iroquois war parties laid siege to Montreal and raided Quebec, sending terrified farmers fleeing from their fields. Some settlers gave up in despair and went back to France. Fifty years after Champlain founded Quebec, barely 3000 colonists lived in New France, and the colony was growing weaker. HO Aboot Te RAN OT SS 9A N ey a Ole ASG OL UR, 'S 55 In 1663, Louis XIV was just beginning his long reign as one of France’s mightiest kings. He refused to let New France collapse. Instead, he took charge of his besieged colony. He sent a powerful governor general and a regiment of soldiers to fight the Iroquois. The Iroquois were too skilled to be defeated by European soldiers who knew nothing of forest warfare, but now that the French had become stronger, the Iroquois agreed to make peace. The French soldiers stayed on to become settlers. The king gave the army officers great tracts of land called seigneuries, and many of the soldiers settled down as their tenants. The king also began sending workers to his colony. Then, since there were already six young men for every woman in New France, he set about encouraging young Heroines of Ville-Marie Of all the people who Mance, she was already in followed Paul de Maison- her thirties when she came neuve te his settlement at to Ville-Marie in 1653. She Ville-Marie (which grew into set up her first school in a Montreal), Jeanne Mance and stable. At first, there were so Marguerite Bourgeoys are few girls to teach that she among the best remembered. too looked after the sick. Jeanne Mance (pictured Then, when the first filles here) was among Maison- du roi arrived from France neuve’s first seventy pioneers. in 1665, she made a home She had one goal: to build a for them. A sign on her door mission hospital. She called read “Girls to Marry,” and her hospital the H6otel-Dieu she acted as matchmaker. (the hostel of God) and she Later she recruited more an order of teaching nuns. worked tirelessly there for teachers, and established Both Jeanne Mance and the next thirty-one years, three schools where Marguerite Bourgeoys tending the sick and injured spinning, sewing, and are remembered for the among the Montagnais, the cooking were taught, as devotion and energy they Hurons, and the French. well as reading and writing. gave their work, but even Marguerite Bourgeoys She was the founder of the more for the love they was a teacher. Like Jeanne Congregation of Notre-Dame, poured into it. 56 ee ee Ie SWEEP Ol eae, Bee CTA Nee DEA women to immigrate. He offered gifts of money to help them get started, and during the 1660s nearly a thousand agreed to seek new lives across the ocean. Frangoise Hobbe of Paris accepted the royal invitation to sail for Canada in 1668. Like most of the filles du roi, she soon found a husband. She married a young soldier named Michel Roy, and the couple settled on a farm near the town of Trois- Rivieres and raised a large family. Habitants SS Boi Poder , “ Gobbi frine flyLb Jes anu peace With peace restored and immigrants arriving every summer, New France began to recover. The Hurons no ; elf Bee ene conser ® longer brought furs to Montreal, but other Native traders did. Voyageurs of New France went inland to meet them in the pays d’en haut, the upper country, which meant all the territories beyond the St. Lawrence Valley. With all the soldiers, labourers, and filles du roi sent by Louis XIV, New France had become home to more than 10000 people by the 1680s. After that, fewer immigrants crossed the ocean, so it came about that these few thousand pioneer men and women were the ancestors of millions of French Canadians. As New France grew, most of its people did what All the horses in New France Fran¢goise Hobbe and Michel Roy did: they became farmers. were descendants of the twenty- Most farm families did nearly everything for themselves. one mares and two stallions Just to clear the trees from their land took years. They built (one of them pictured here) that their own homes and furniture from the wood they cut. King Louis XIV of France sent They made their own rough homespun clothes from the over from his stables in 166S. wool and flax they raised, and they grew most of their food By the next century, most in their own fields and gardens. It was hard work, but the farmers owned their own horse, land was fertile and there was plenty of it. The people who something only nobles could lived on the farms of New France called themselves habitants. hope to do in Europe. Farm families were big families. Most children in New France had eight or ten sisters and brothers, crammed together in small two-room farmhouses heated only by a fireplace in the kitchen. They worked on their parents’ farms until they grew up, and then cleared more land of its trees and started farms of their own.  Age Be et eA een 2:S se BN Viera ve Cre: Lome Ross 57 Each year, farm families in New France had to pay part of their crop to their parish priest and another part to the seigneur who owned their land. Some seigneuries were owned by the king’s officials, others by army officers from noble families, and others by religious orders of priests and nuns. These were powerful people, the rulers of New France. They expected the habitants who farmed the land to support them. By the time Francoise and Michel Roy’s children and grandchildren were starting their own farms, the shores of the St. Lawrence River from below Quebec to Montreal were an almost unbroken line of tidy wooden homes. In spring, the habitants and their ox teams ploughed the long, narrow fields stretching back into the hills. In summer, One winter, when cash ran low, they tended the precious crops of wheat and let the cattle the intendant of New France graze in the meadows. In fall, after the harvest, it was time paid the colony’s debts by to slaughter the fat pigs and make salt pork for the winter. writing IOUs on playing cards. Winter was the season for cutting wood and hauling grain After that, all paper money in to the seigneur’s mill. New France was called “card Despite the burdens, life became easier as the years money.” This artist’s impression passed. Often the habitants gathered at the church, with shows what the first playing-card their children crowded around them, to celebrate another money might have looked like. marriage or baptism. When they drove a wagonload of grain to the mill or spent a lively evening dancing and sharing stories, the descendants of soldiers and filles du roi could be proud of the land they had cultivated and the homes they loved. Not everyone in New France lived on a farm. The founders of Montreal, who had come to build a mission but had found themselves in the midst of the Iroquois wars, eventually made Montreal into a busy trading town. Montreal was the centre of the fur trade, and its streets were lined with the warehouses of the merchants and the voyageurs’ favourite taverns. On the waterfront at Quebec, the site of Champlain’s Habitation was now crowded with storehouses and docks. Three-masted sailing ships arrived from France with cargo, passengers, and news. Small boats sailed up and down the river, the great highway of the colony. Newly arrived 58 Sel Te CNet hess OGLE Ne ARD® 4 GrA sailors who had escaped storms and other dangers made pilgrimages to the shrine of Ste-Anne-de-Beaupreé to give thanks to God and the saint. Stately stone buildings lined the streets that now covered Louis Hébert’s fields high above the river. In the shops, aristocratic ladies and gentlemen could visit a silversmith or have an elegant wig fitted. In the Quebec City seminary, young men studied theology and Latin. In the convents, young women learned less Latin and theology, At the centre of the Place and more domestic skills. Convents and seminaries were Royale, near the river’s edge the only schools, but because there were many. convents, in Quebec City, stands the more women than men went to school in New France. church of Notre-Dame. In Choirs sang in the cathedral. Companies of soldiers 1690, when Governor tramped through the street, and hard-driven slaves and Frontenac drove back servants ran about doing errands. For the aristocrats, the English invaders, it was city of Quebec made an elegant home. When the governor named “Notre-Dame-de-la- general of New France entertained at the Chateau Saint- Victoire” - Our Lady of Louis, they arrived in silk and lace for balls almost as Victory. In 1711, the English spectacular as those Louis XIV gave at his new palace once more failed in an of Versailles. attempt to attack the capital The governor general was the king’s representative in of New France, and the New France, but Louis XIV, a shrewd man, kept a leash on church was renamed “Notre- his governor. He sent a man called the intendant to help Dame-des-Victoires” - Our manage the colony, and the governor could do very little Lady of Victories. without his agreement. When they worked together, Today, all around the the governor and intendant were powerful rulers. Their church stand the homes and authority was as absolute in the colony as the king’s was shops and warehouses of the in France. They saw themselves as fathers to the people of people of the eighteenth- New France, and they believed fathers should be loving century port. The Place but stern. Royale looks much as it did The governor general commanded the colony’s troops, in the glory days of New the Compagnies Franches de la Marine. Their officers were France. The walled city of the young aristrocrats of New France, who made war their Quebec, which rises above profession. In bright blue coats and white overcoats, the the Place Royale, is the heart companies made a fine sight on the place d’armes of of French culture in North Montreal, Quebec, or Louisbourg — but they did more than America, and it has been parade. Soldiers of the Compagnies Franches had to be declared a World Heritage good with a paddle, an axe, and a pair of snowshoes. On Site by the United Nations. the battlefield they carried a flintlock musket with a long