When the French Were Here
Champlain Quadricentennial
Samuel de Champlain, A Life
Founding Quebec
Champlain’s detailed maps arrived in Paris just as the French court learned that the English had spent a winter on the Kennebec and were now launching a colony in Virginia at Jamestown. The English challenge impelled King Henry to closely heed Champlain’s proposals for a stronger, more permanent French colony in New France.
For the first time placed in charge of an expedition, he left France in April, 1608 with 31 colonists aboard the Don de Dieu, the Gift of God. He now began his most ambitious undertaking, the founding of Quebec. He chose a site where the Saint Lawrence narrows to cannon range where he could more easily repel an English attack.
At the foot of a high bluff, he laid out a settlement of three main buildings surrounded by ditches and a palisade. While two-thirds of the colonists died that first winter, Quebec survived. Champlain greeted more colonists who arrived in 1609.
