Basic HTML Version
(From Left to Right)
Count Frontenac refused
to surrender Quebec
to the English in 1690,
saying: “My only reply
will be from the mouths
of my cannons!”
Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur
d’Iberville, was a great
hero of New France,
winning many victories
over the English, from
James Bay in the north to
Nevis in the Caribbean,
in the late 17th and early
18th centuries
Sir Guy Carleton (Lord
Dorchester), as Governor
of Quebec, defended the
rights of the
Canadiens
,
defeated an American
military invasion of
Quebec in 1775, and
supervised the Loyalist
migration to Nova Scotia
and Quebec in 1782–83
15
Discover Canada
Royal New France
In 1604, the first European settlement north of
Florida was established by French explorers
Pierre de Monts and Samuel de Champlain, first
on St. Croix Island (in present-day Maine), then at
Port-Royal, in Acadia (present-day Nova Scotia).
In 1608 Champlain built a fortress at what is now
Québec City. The colonists struggled against a
harsh climate. Champlain allied the colony with
the Algonquin, Montagnais and Huron, historic
enemies of the Iroquois, a confederation of five
(later six) First Nations who battled with the
French settlements for a century. The French and
the Iroquois made peace in 1701.
The French and Aboriginal people collaborated
in the vast fur-trade economy, driven by the
demand for beaver pelts in Europe. Outstanding
leaders like Jean Talon, Bishop Laval, and Count
Frontenac built a French Empire in North America
that reached from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of
Mexico.
Struggle for a continent
In 1670, King Charles II of England granted the
Hudson’s Bay Company exclusive trading rights
over the watershed draining into Hudson Bay.
For the next 100 years the Company competed
with Montreal-based traders. The skilled and
courageous men who travelled by canoe were
called
voyageurs
and
coureurs des bois
, and
formed strong alliances with First Nations.
English colonies along the Atlantic seaboard,
dating from the early 1600s, eventually became
richer and more populous than New France. In
the 1700s France and Great Britain battled for
control of North America. In 1759, the British
defeated the French in the Battle of the Plains
of Abraham at Québec City — marking the end
of France’s empire in America. The commanders
of both armies, Brigadier James Wolfe and the
Marquis de Montcalm, were killed leading their
troops in battle.
The province of Quebec
Following the war, Great Britain renamed the
colony the “Province of Quebec.” The French-
speaking Catholic people, known as
habitants
or
Canadiens
, strove to preserve their way of life
in the English-speaking, Protestant-ruled British
Empire.
A tradition of accommodation
To better govern the French Roman Catholic
majority, the British Parliament passed the
Quebec Act
of 1774. One of the constitutional
foundations of Canada, the
Quebec Act
accommodated the principles of British
institutions to the reality of the province. It
allowed religious freedom for Catholics and
permitted them to hold public office, a practice
not then allowed in Britain. The
Quebec Act
restored French civil law while maintaining
British criminal law.
United empire loyalists
In 1776, the 13 British colonies to the south of
Quebec declared independence and formed the
United States. North America was again divided
by war. More than 40,000 people loyal to the
Crown, called “Loyalists,” fled the oppression
of the American Revolution to settle in Nova
Scotia and Quebec. Joseph Brant led thousands
of Loyalist Mohawk Indians into Canada. The
Loyalists came from Dutch, German, British,
Scandinavian, Aboriginal and other origins
and from Presbyterian, Anglican, Baptist,
Methodist, Jewish, Quaker and Catholic religious
backgrounds. About 3,000 black Loyalists,
freedmen and slaves came north seeking a better
life. In turn, in 1792, some black Nova Scotians,
who were given poor land, moved on to establish
Freetown, Sierra Leone (West Africa), a new
British colony for freed slaves.