Samuel de Champlain

Let me introduce you to Samuel de Champlain, the founding father of New France. He laid the foundations for the colony and built alliances with Indigenous nations such as the Montagnais, Huron, Odawa, and Nipissing. He even fought alongside them in battle against the Iroquois. Champlain not only founded Quebec, he also led the colony and helped shape its future. Fascinated by navigation from an early age, he traveled to the West Indies, Mexico, and South America before turning twenty. In 1603, without any official title, he sailed up the Saint Lawrence River and published the first detailed account of the region since Jacques Cartier’s expeditions a century earlier. The following year, he returned as a cartographer, in search of the best place to establish a colony. A few years later, he was named lieutenant and set sail from France, heading west. He arrived at Cap Diamant on July 3, 1608, and later wrote: “I looked for a suitable place to settle, but I found none better situated than the point of Quebec.” From there, he set out to build a city that would become the heart of a thriving colony—driven by the booming fur trade. When he died on Christmas Day in 1635, the colony counted only 150 settlers. But it was the beginning of something much greater—a nation that would grow to over 8 million people. The four books Champlain published during his lifetime are the only written records of life in New France during the early 17th century.