Tadoussac (pronounced Tah-do-sack) hugs a small inlet at the mouth of the Saguenay River as it empties into the St. Lawrence River. Today it is a small village on the northern bank of the St. Lawrence River roughly 200 km from Quebec City. In the history of Canada, its importance can not be overstated. This article explores why.

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So few Canadians are aware of this village as Quebec City and Montreal dominate the landscape of the Province of Quebec, at least I wasn’t. It was only when I started researching the voyages of Samuel de Champlain that I understood the importance of this little village.

Tadoussac, or tatouskak as it was known by the Indigenous nations, provided a protected harbour for the Montagnais (Innu) people to set up a summer trading camp. It was a well-known location amongst the Indigenous nations of the east coast. The Mi’kmaq called it Gtatosag while the Innu called it Totauskak meaning “breasts” or “udders.” An odd name no doubt but historians suggest it may refer to a pair of rounded hills near the harbour.

The Saguenay river: gateway to the interior of Quebec

Only two locations at the mouth of the Saguenay were large enough to accommodate the hundreds of Indigenous peoples who arrived here each summer to trade with the Innu. One was on the western bank; the other was Totausak.

The Saguenay river’s shoreline at its mouth gave way to massive walls of rock on both sides providing the Innu traders with a spectacular scene as they made their way to and from their summer trading camp.

At the end of a summer of trading, the Innu broke camp at Tadoussac and travelled upstream from the St. Lawrence hugging the banks of the river. The Saguenay narrowed into a fjord with walls on both sides reaching upwards of 200 meters in some places. Those rock faces dropped below the water’s surface to a depth of an astonishing 250 meters deep at some places.

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In August 1600 when Champlain returned to Spain from his overseas voyage to the Spanish West Indies and New Spain his mind was full of the images of what he saw and witnessed. Physically, he showed the effects of the long voyages and frequent overland excursions. He sported a sunburnt face, a long beard and a robust frame. But his head was full of mixed emotions - some good and some very disturbing. Despite all this, he was glad to have made the journey.

He achieved a personal goal to see for himself what the Spanish were preventing others to see. As soon as he could he put feather to paper and began to write a report called “A Brief Discourse” which he described what he had seen and how Spain made so much vast wealth from these lands. He also included drawings he had made during his travels.

Champlain inherits his uncle Allène’s estate

By the time he returned to Cadiz in Spain as soon as he could he went to see his uncle, Captain Guillaume Allène. The captain was not the same man that sent him off three years previously. Despite the brief time, Allène could no longer take care of himself. It is uncertain if Champlain’s aunt was still alive to nurse him. He was extremely sick and would have less than a year to live.

At his uncle’s request, Champlain immediately set about organizing the captain’s papers and getting his estate in order. In less than a year, by June 1601 Captain Allène was dead. In his will the captain gave to Champlain a substantial estate near La Rochelle in Saintonge, France as well as commercial properties in Spain. Also, more of an annoyance than an inheritance, Champlain was now the owner of a 150-ton ship tied up at the dock in the village of San Sebastian in northeastern Spain. No mention was made of the San Julian, the ship owned by the captain used by Champlain on his voyages, but Spain owed a substantial sum for the use of the ship.

Captain Allène bequeathed all these properties to Champlain not out of convenience but because he was very fond of his nephew. He had complete trust in him because Champlain demonstrated good judgement and loyalty. And besides all that, the captain was fond of the Champlain family into which he married through his wife, the sister of Samuel’s mother.

However, this inheritance turned into an accounting nightmare for Champlain. He was required to meet with the stakeholders to settle any claims and to finish any outstanding commercial arrangements. What Champlain did with San Julian and the Captain’s other ship is not known but he disposed of them as he had no need of them.

After completing this accounting business, he focused on finishing his report of his travels across the Atlantic. He described the peoples, wildlife, crops and fruits he found there, but he also warned that Spain had almost full control of the Spanish West Indies and New Spain. He believed any opportunities for France in these territories would come through war. The key islands of Puerto Rico, San Domingo, Cuba and the Spanish Main (Mexico and south) were fully Spanish. France could pick off smaller island chains, but any larger islands could only be taken by the edge of a sword.

Champlain moves to Paris at the request of King Henri IV

This brief report landed not as a thud on King Henri IV’s desk but as a long-awaited letter from a dear friend. The King was grateful for Champlain’s courage and loyalty to France, so much so that the King granted him a lifelong pension and ordered him to remain at court. This meant Samuel de Champlain’s new address was the Louvre in Paris. It also means he was now financially independent.

With his newfound opportunity, he did not waste his days living amongst the courtiers of the Louvre. Rather, he busied himself by absorbing the knowledge and expertise of the scientists and cartographers whom King Henri had brought to Paris. With his evident ability at drawing, Champlain eagerly absorbed the art of cartography and became an excellent geographer and mapmaker.

It seems quite fitting that the founder of Canada’s first European settlement would be a mapmaker not a conquering soldier. When he eventually made his journeys to what would become New France, Champlain would use his newly developed skills to accurately map out its coastlines and topography. He would use his experiences in the West Indies to locate defensible ports for French vessels that were also capable of sustaining a growing population.

Although he first established settlements in what is now Nova Scotia, it would be the town of Quebec that demonstrated Champlain’s knowledge of using geography as a defensive measure while ensuring a reliable food supply for its inhabitants.

When Champlain arrived at the Louvre, he had little inkling of what he would become. But history is a collection of unremarkable events and small decisions would lead to momentous events. Such was the case for Champlain as he arrived in Paris in 1601.

This is the story of a series of unremarkable events that would lead to a decision to venture across the North Atlantic and found the first permanent French settlement in what would become Canada.

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Throughout the history of Indian-White relations in North America, there have always been two impulses afoot. Extermination and assimilation.

So wrote Professor Thomas King of the University of Guelph in his landmark book “The Inconvenient Indian.”

King noted that the assimilation of “lesser beings” had its source in interpretation of Aristotle’s “Natural Law.” To balance this thinking, the Greek philosopher offered another concept which he called the “Natural Slave.” He defined these two laws in his work “Politics.”

…those who are as different [from other men] as the soul from the body or man from beast—and they are in this state if their work is the use of the body, and if this is the best that can come from them—are slaves by nature. For them it is better to be ruled in accordance with this sort of rule, if such is the case for the other things mentioned.

Of course, just leaving the Indians alone with their own culture and language was not an option.

The bright and darks sides of the Enlightenment

Aristotle’s Politics directly affected the treatment of the Indigenous peoples of Latin America. The Valladolid Debate (1550 - 1551) took place between two Spanish philosophers, Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda. It was an attempt to reconcile their opposing views of the enslavement of the Indigenous peoples of New Spain.

Casas was deeply troubled by Spanish treatment of Indians and Black slaves in the Caribbean Pearl industry. Sepúlveda rejected that view arguing that slavery was justified because they were subhumans.

The Spanish rulers arranged the Debate to answer the question, “Was it was legally justifiable to wage war (a Just War) against the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, especially Latin and South America?”

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Ambitious French and English sailors in the late 16th Century were drawn to the Spanish West Indies like bugs to bright lights. Any unauthorized entry was punishable by death. Samuel de Champlain was no different, except he sought authorization to go there.

Champlain needed to find a reason to join a Spanish fleet sailing to the West Indies. That would not be easy even though Spain concluded a peace treaty with France in the 1590s. Amazingly, he found a way, but when he got there, he was astonished at the flora and fauna he had never seen before. He was fascinated by the natural surroundings of the islands and landscapes of New Spain. The native people there never ceased to astonish him by their strength and unique cultures. Yet, his sense of morality was deeply offended by the treatment of these native peoples by the Spanish authorities both civil and clergy. The same feelings were aroused when he saw the extensive use of slaves that generated vast amounts of wealth for Spain.

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It was this Spanish wealth that enticed French corsairs and English privateers to attack Spanish treasure ships sailing back to Spain and rob them of their valuable cargos. The most famous privateer from this age was Sir Francis Drake who made quite an impression on the Spanish authorities for his daring and success. He became a favourite of Queen Elizabeth for his skills, which gave his contemporary Sir Martin Frobisher’s unending hatred of the more famous buccaneer. From time-to-time English privateers made daring attacks on Spanish ports such as San Juan in Puerto Rico when opportunities arose. Champlain would see firsthand the results of one such raid.

Back in France, Champlain found himself unexpectedly out of work. After the defeat of the Spanish forces during 1598 by a combined effort of English and French forces, many soldiers and officers were relieved of their duties. This included Champlain. Without work, he decided to find an authorized means of visiting the Spanish West Indies and author a report about what he saw to King Henry IV. This would make him a spy for his King, although he never thought of himself that way.

This is the story of how Champlain managed to visit the Spanish West Indies and what he learned from his experiences while there. What he experienced left an indelible impression on him. He learned what not to do when found himself in New France. This journey instilled in him a respect for Indigenous cultures. His Canadian settlements would not repeat the horrors inflicted on the Indigenous peoples in New Spain.

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“A man of unquestioned honesty and agreeable nature…[who] boasted the rare distinction of never having been thrown from a horse. At roughriding and roping he was an expert’ (Turner, 1950, pg. 461).

Sometimes in life you are in the right place and the right time to meet the most amazing people.

When I lived in Calgary, Alberta during the late 1970s, I stayed in a boarding house run by a kind elderly lady. Often, I would spend many afternoons in my landlady’s kitchen chatting to her best friend Miss Janet “Nettie” Ware. My landlady and Nettie were longtime friends from when they were both teachers in the small town of Vulcan, Alberta.

Often Nettie would talk about her father John Ware.

At the time I had no idea who John Ware was but after some prompting from my landlady, Nettie was happy to share her stories about her father, who as it turned out was one of the most famous of Canadian cowboys.

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Learning about John Ware from Nettie Ware

Many books and videos have been made about John Ware, but this is the story about how I came to learn about John Ware.

The Blackfoot Indians called him “Matoxy Sex Apee Quin” because they thought John Ware was related to the spirit world. He was undoubtedly one of the best cowboys ever to ride on the prairies during 19th century Canada. But to me, what makes his story more amazing than his skills, which were extraordinary, was his backstory.

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Henry IV, King of France from 1553 to 1610, shared much in common with the People of Saintonge. Both were cheerful and optimistic. They loved life. They were ambitious. They were full of energy and were comfortable with both Protestantism and Catholicism. This was reflected in the name given to the French monarch - le Bon Roi Henri, the Good King Henry. His reign ended the exhausting war between these religions. Never again would France suffer a civil war like the Wars of Religion, until the horrific death toll of the French Revolution. Sadly, Henry would be assassinated in 1610 by an extremist Catholic.

Samuel de Champlain came of age before Henry’s reign. Nevertheless, le Bon Roi Henry would become Samuel’s mentor, setting the example for the young explorer to be. Champlain, like his Monarch, tackled problems head on and succeeded not by the edge of a sword but by diplomacy and trust.

Antoine de Bourbon and Queen Jeanne of Navarre

King Henry IV was the first of the House of Bourbon to rule France. This House would continue until it was overthrown during the French Revolution.

In 1547, Henry’s father Antoine de Bourbon married Jeanne d’Albret the daughter of the King of Navarre and of the Principality of Béarn. Her father was known as Henri II. When King Henri II died in 1555, Antoine and Jeanne jointly ruled these territories. Their lands straddled what is now Southern France and Northern Spain. It also included the territory of Andorra.

Antoine de Bourbon enjoyed jus sanguinis, which was the right of blood to inherit the French throne through the Capetian dynasty. But he never had the opportunity to exercise that right.

In 1553, Jeanne d’Albret crossed into France proper to stay at the Château de Pau. She was expecting a child and wanted to ensure the child was born in France. Shortly after arriving, she gave birth to a son whom they named Henri. When King Henri II died in 1555, their son became known as Prince Henri de Béarn and Navarre. Although Henri was baptized Catholic his mother raised him a Calvinist.

Despite Jeanne’s Calvinism, Antoine was hostile to the Huguenots. He would eventually die during the Wars of Religion in 1562. Jeanne III Queen of Navarre would become sole ruler of Navarre until her death in 1572. Her son Henri inherited his father’s title as King Henri III of Navarre.

During his mother’s reign, Henri was deeply influenced by his mother. Henri’s success as a leader, both politically and militarily, is due to that influence. She put him in situations that would give his son opportunities to develop the skills needed to be an effective King.

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What do you think of when asked “What is the origin of Canada”?

Do you think of the encounter by Jacques Cartier with the St. Lawrence Iroquois in 1535 at the “narrowing of the great river”, otherwise known as Quebec?

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Membership is 5.00 USD per month or a discounted yearly fee of 30.00 USD. Substack will not let me charge less than 5.00 USD. It uses Stripe to process payments, which is a trustworthy financial services provider.

Why this change?

Each post takes approximately one month to research and write. In most cases I am researching topics at least 3 months in advance. And this takes considerable time and resources (both caffeine and financial). I have found books available through my Kindle subscription, others through free online resources but the key resources I have purchased.

Membership benefits

Beyond Brant and Brock members will get access to the full archive as well as each post as a podcast (in development). In the new year I hope to produce related videos.

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European mapmakers made tentative steps at trying to determine the shape of the coastline. They based their cartography on reports from explorers and fishing fleets, if these sources were willing to part with their hard-won knowledge.

But few navigators on board these ships had the neccessary skills to create even roughly accurate maps. Determining longitude was utter guess-work. Latitude, however, could be more accurately determined. Using a sextant, a navigator assertained the angle between the sun and a known celestial body such as the North Star. Taking this angle, they consulted a char…

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Sometimes, as the saying goes, facts are more fascinating than fiction. In this, the last chapter of Sir Martin Frobisher, historians could not write a better ending for the great Privateer’s life. Frobisher exited history on the same peninsula that Samuel de Champlain entered history.1

In the fall of 1594, the English under command of Frobisher and the French under command of Marshal Aumont joined forces to defeat the Spanish defenders of Spain’s northern-most Bastian on the Atlantic coastline - Fort Corzon (El Leon in Spanish) in Brittany.

Prelude to the Anglo/Spanish war

The last decades of the 16th Century, the French or English made no real attempts to explore and settle Canada for reasons as we shall soon see. Spanish fishing fleets continued to sail to Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence to catch fish or harvest whales. English and French fleets also made the sailing for the same lucrative commodities.

Aside from this activity, English settlements and t…

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When Martin Frobisher returned from his second voyage in 1576 with 200 tons of mined ore, he was at the zenith of his reputation1. Up and down England he was hailed as a hero and great explorer in the same class that Sir Francis Drake or Sir Walter Raleigh would be. But unlike these explorers, Frobisher’s peak veneration would not last. His financially disastrous third voyage in 1578 would lead to the ruin of the “Company of Cathay” investors. It would also result in a debacle of failed attempts at extracting gold from the 800 or so tons of ore extracted from the Artic.

But all that was yet to occur. Frobisher was busy during the fall and winter of 1577-1578 preparing for his third and final voyage to the Arctic. Still hoping to discover the Northwest Passage, he had to suspend this goal for the time being as the Queen and her Privy Council had other more pressing plans for this voyage.

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During Frobisher’s 1576 voyage to the Arctic, a crewmember on an island picked up an unusual black rock that had within it something that glittered. Suspecting it contained gold, Frobisher held on to it in his cabin. When he arrived back in London, this dense, bread-sized rock became a source of much speculation and analysis. It ultimately led to a voyage to Frobisher Bay in 1577 to gather three shiploads of the rock and then again in 1578 to gather fifteen shiploads more.

Unfortunately, against such high hopes, these expeditions ended with financial disaster, prison for Martin Lok and a damaged reputation for Frobisher.

However, before Lok considered backing another voyage, he initiated several months of research into determining if the glitter was indeed gold or a valueless mineral such as quartz. During the fall of 1576 into the winter of 1577, Michael Lok found several assayers to answer that question.

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The majority of assayers assigned to analyze the rock determined it to be valuel…

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Before we continue the story of Frobisher’s voyages to the Arcti, some context about the peoples Martin Frobisher and his crews encountered would be helpful.

The Inuit presented a formidable challenge to these Englishmen who had never seen a people who could not only survive but thrive in the harsh Arctic conditions.

The first encounter between the English and the Inuit occurred during Frobisher’s first voyage in 1576. When inspecting an island at the head of Frobisher Bay, Frobisher and Christopher Hall saw what he thought were “Porpoises or Ceales, or some kinde of strange fish: but coming nearer, he discovered them to be men, in small boates made of leather.” After some careful negotiations, nine Inuit boarded the Gabriel and showed little or no fear. Historian Kenn Harper suggests they probably had seen Europeans before. Events after this meeting would cause a small war between them in the 1577 voyage. One of the nine was requested to be…

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Securing funding for Frobisher’s voyage to search for a north-west passage to the Pacific Ocean was proving to be very difficult. As no concrete evidence was available that this route existed, speculators needed good reasons to back a venture that could potentially ruin them.

Current maps made available to English navigators showed the known world, but they were full of fictional places and equally fictional distances. They were as much guesswork as factual. Unknown parts of the world, such as the northern coastlines of North America, appeared as vast blank areas on these maps.

Nevertheless, English merchants began to wonder if a route to Asia existed across the top of North America. After all, they had discovered and then exploited a route across the top of Europe to Muscovy (current Murmansk and the White Sea down to Moscow).

Martin Frobisher was one of the first - if not the first - Englishmen to offer his services to find a passage to the Pacific…

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First, let’s get a myth out of the way first

North America witnessed its first Thanksgiving feast in 1621, or so the myth goes. “Pilgrims” who were in fact religious dissidents (not Anglican) landed in what would become Plymouth, Massachusetts, but being non-explorers, their food ran out. Their new theocratic settlement in the vein of “The Handmade’s Tale” were saved by the Wampanoag peoples who took pity on these rattled foreigners.

It is an enduring American myth that has been purged of its less pleasant elements and replaced with cuddly, fun stuff: tables full of stuffed turkeys, pumpkin pies, vanilla ice cream; family gathered around the TV to watch the usual sports games; and embarrassed children dressed as either “Indians” or “pilgrims” putting on endearing plays for the adults. It is appealing and completely disconnected to any real events that took place centuries ago.

It is also completely wrong in one key aspect.

Long before the ratt…

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The great obsession: finding a route to Asia

As European explorers gradually came to the realization that the lands first encountered by Christopher Columbus in 1492 and then by subsequent explorers were in fact not Asia but a great unknown land mass, searching for a passage through it (or around it) became an obsession.

In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer sailing for Spain, sailed across the Atlantic and followed the coast of South America to the southern tip of the continent. He then threaded his fleet through a complex set of islands now called the Magellan Straight to reach the Pacific Ocean. After crossing the Pacific, then known as the South Sea, his expedition finally reached Asia. After getting himself killed in the Phillipines, Magellan’s remaining ships under new leadership continued on and managed to circumnavi…

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Throughout the 16th Century only four powers had the capabilities and resources to explore the “new worlds” across the Atlantic Ocean, some more than others.

All four were in a race to capture the Asian markets to enrich their coffers. At the beginning of the 16th Century, Spain and Portugal dominated the oceans. By the middle of the century, they were fast becoming exhausted from exploring and looting South and Central America. Consequently, the Iberian monarchies had little interest in sending ships north to find a northern route to Asia. This wasn’t the case for the Iberian commercial fishing fleets who sought the rich cod and whaling fisheries off Newfoundland, Labrador and Nova Scotia. The English and French fishing fleets would soon dominate the cod fisheries, however. But it isn’t like the Spanish were worried about it. Maybe the Portuguese who saw these northern neighbours infringing on their “God-given rights” to dominate the eastern coastli…

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What about the native tribes who lived there? When they saw strange and very large canoes out in the ocean, it was as if an unknown tribe had come to invade their land. They weren’t far off from the truth.

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How these two groups learned to become traders and allies – or not - is the goal of this article.

Terra nullius?

When European explorers first discovered North America, they imagined the land to be unoccupied and uninhabited – terra nullius. Of course, we know it was inhabited by a vast number of tribes speaking hundreds of different languages and dialects. In fact, some estimate the Americas had a greater population than all of Europe together. At the beginning of the 16th Century, none of the deadly diseases of Europe had decimated their populations as had …

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“SEBASTIAN Cabot was a man capable of disguising the truth, whenever it was to his interest to do so.”1

Sebastian Cabot was the middle child - as was I, not like there is anything wrong about it. And like me, he crossed the Atlantic Ocean several times. But this is where the similarity ends. I spent the many crossings crammed into a metal tube at 30,000 feet above the water with my knees smashed against the seat ahead of mine. Mind you, Sebastian Cabot may not have had a better experience. He spent the crossings in fragile barques or caravels buffeted by intense waves and harrowing storms. He used this type of sailing vessel to reach Brazil and Labrador.

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I knew that I would write about Sebastian Cabot after completing the stories of John Cabot’s discovery of Newfoundland. I had no idea what a challenge this would turn out to be. He is a controversial historical figure. During research, he came across as a scoundrel and a fraud. At other times he exhibited flashes of g…

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Although John Cabot landed for less than a day on an island he thought was part of Asia, it was sufficient for the English to claim it as territory of the King of England. For the Portuguese king, this had offended their claims to lands east of the latitude drawn up by the Treaty of Tordesillas. King Henry VII was quite unfazed by this. As far as he was concerned, no Portuguese ship had yet discovered any territory north of Brazil so it was free for the taking. And besides, between 1492 and 1496 the explorer Christopher Columbus sailing for Spain had only discovered a series of islands which he thought was part of Indi…

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