Cartier Abandons Canada

1543

Jacques Cartier loaded what he believed were diamonds and gold onto his ships and sailed home from the St. Lawrence after a miserable winter of scurvy and hostile Iroquois raids. The stones turned out to be quartz and iron pyrite. French Canada plans were shelved for sixty years. The false diamonds entered French as the proverb faux comme les diamants du Canada, discrediting Canadian exploration for decades.