Champlain's First Voyage to the Saint Lawrence

1603

The French navigator Samuel de Champlain sailed up the Saint Lawrence as far as the Lachine Rapids, mapping Mi'kmaq villages and sketching the whales of Tadoussac. He returned to France convinced a permanent French colony in Canada was both possible and lucrative, if the winters could be survived. His journals combined the eye of a geographer with the ambition of an empire builder.