Showing posts with label Quebec. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Quebec. Show all posts

Friday, March 29, 2024

Quebec - Strife During the Early Years






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European fishermen had long traveled to the west chasing the codfish, which were in high demand in Catholic Europe, especially during Lent. In the course of these sea voyages, they'd long been in contact with the Iroquoian speaking people of Maritime Canada, such as the Mi'Kmaq, and the Wendat, more familiarly called "Huron," or Algonquin. These people lived from the mouth of the St. Lawrence  westward, and, in those days, around the shores of the Great Lakes. These voyaging fishermen--Basques, Portuguese, English-- soon realized that great stores of high quality furs could obtained here, and fur--especially beaver, almost extinct in Europe--quickly became more important than their original  quarry. 


In the 16th Century, when Jacques Cartier sailed down the St. Lawrence, he saw many thriving Huron palisaded villages. By the time of Champlain, these sites had been abandoned and the plains beside the river were empty, except for the seasonal hunting of neighboring tribes and war parties. Perhaps the long war between the Algonquin the Iroquois was the reason that these sites were abandoned, but I believe the real reason was smallpox and the other "new" infectious diseases contact with Europeans brought, which were fatal to these town-dwelling Indians. Cartier treated the native people brutally, even kidnapping prominent members of the same tribes that had had peaceful dealings with him and carrying them back to France. None of these men survived to return. 

Champlain was a wiser man who managed to plant permanent French settlements along the river and to make treaties with the people of Huronia. "Champlain's Dream,"a biography by noted historian David Hackett Fischer, builds a case for this explorer's decent reputation. He, almost alone among "Discoverers,"believed that the native peoples and the French could live together in peace in this land.

His original aim was defeated by practical politics. In order for the French settlers to survive, they were forced to make alliances with his closest neighbors--the Huron and Algonquin. This immediately put him in conflict with the Iroquois, their southern neighbors, and he, and his new weapons became part of ongoing war between these tribes. 



As with all early European settlements, Champlain's ability to supply his colonies was constantly thwarted by the turbulence of European politics. First, there was the Counter-Reformation, which pitted Catholics against Protestants--in this case French Huguenots, who would be massacred and driven out. Second, there was the vicious struggle for power and over royal succession that had wracked the French Court for hundreds years. 

The funding problem accelerated after Henry IV, a believer in religious tolerence and Champlain's patron, was assassinated by a Catholic fanatic. No sooner would a few settlers arrive in this hostile place, too cold for most familiar European crops, than funding and supplies would again dry up, leaving the settlers left to struggle through best they could, all while in the midst of a neverending Indian war.  

Next, another European war got underway. It would take pages to describe who, what, where, and why, but the English tried to seize the St. Lawrence valley and the fisheries on what are now called Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, islands just beyond the Gulf of the St. Lawrence. 

When Quebec was attacked in 1629 by English privateers named Kirke (licensed to do so by Charles I) the colony, already beleaguered and depending upon friendly Indians for food, was forced to surrender. Champlain got the best terms possible for the citizens of Quebec, but had neither the food nor the gunpowder, shot, and fuses needed to defend the town. (I call these Englishmen privateers, but they behaved like pirates, allowing their men to torture and kill a family of farmers (and their animals!) they found at Cape Tourmente, and to destroy every other small undefended settlement they saw along the Gulf of St. Lawrence.)  

In the end, this English conquest didn't last long as peace was declared between England and France. It took months for the news to reach the New World, but, in the end, Champlain managed to free himself from his captors. He returned in 1633 with three ships and 150 settlers. The year after, four ships with 200 colonists arrived, and in 1635, three hundred immigrants came, although eventually almost half of them returned to France. Still, some of these new Habitants stayed, increased and multiplied, and those determined families are the foundation of French Canada. 

Champlain died in Quebec that winter, on Christmas day in the aftermath of a stroke, but the colony continued to hang on and against all odds--Indian wars, and more periods of dire neglect by the French. Despite everything, Quebec survived. There would be many more twists and turns in the fortunes of French Canada, but the English would not make their final return until the end of the Seven Years War (aka The French & Indian War) in 1763.  


~~Juliet Waldron



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Thursday, June 29, 2023

St. Lawrence River--a world changes forever

 

While researching a new historical bride story for Quebec, I realized that once again I have bumped up against a landscape which has totally changed since my childhood. My parents and I lived for a time on Skanaeateles Lake in New York State, when the midstate area was still a bustling industrial region. Post war, people looking for work came down Route 20 past our house. In 1953, many of these travelers were aiming to turn north and head to Massena, New York, where ground on the long debated seaway (since before World War I) had at last been broken. 

This project was first proposed in the 1890's, as a way to open the vast interiors of Canada and the U.S. to maritime trade. Miles of rapids would be eliminated, rapids which the first travelers into the Northwest territories had navigated by portage, and, later, in the 19th century, by a series of canals. The canals were too and narrow to accomodate large modern ships, so there was a trans-shipping industry with much loading and unloading, in which smaller ships carried ores, coal and grain from Canada and the American midwest, to the nearest deep water port. Of course, the largest visual cue for anyone airborne surveying the territory between the Atlantic and Lake Eire was the magnificent drop at Niagara Falls.  

When I was very small, my parents took me through upstate New York, way up past my family's homestead near Schuylerville, NY to the shores of the St. Lawrence. From the American side, I saw many lovely islands dotting the river, some with "castles" built upon them. There were also terrifying rapids, and, in between small boats, some fishermen, some sightseers, out for a day's work or pleasure on the river. My mother told me stories about  one of her great-aunts who had spent her summers working as a cook on one of those pretty touring vessels. 

Eisenhower was president when the project began; he was still president when, in 1959, the seaway was, with much fanfare, completed. Young Queen Elizabeth arrived on HMY Britannia to do some official ribbon-cutting and sail on a small section of the newly completed Seaway. At last the interior of both Canada and the U.S. were open, cutting costs for the shippers and making the Great Lakes, and all the rich commodities both north and south of the border, available to ocean going ships.



Well, fanfare of trumpets for Progress, which was the watch-word for the optimistic 1950's! 
I don't want to omit, though, that there were also many severe individual losses, as old family farmlands, small historic river towns, and even some of those "thousand islands" were demolished, as grand mansions, fertile fields and fecund wetlands alike vanished beneath the water. A long established way of life beside this great river was forever lost. Generations of families who had lived tranquil, seasonal lives here, lost their land and homes through Eminent Domain.

One group who probably lost more than anyone to modernization were The People of the Flint, a group of Iroquoian (Six Nation's) people. Most of the those on Kahnawake reservation now are Mohawk, but others once belonged to their southern brothers, the Caughnawagas. Still others were refugees, fleeing the European take-over of their heritary lands.

Forty thousand three hundred and twenty acres were originally granted to the Iroquois. Today, thirteen thousand acres remain. The rest has been taken by non-native encroachment and abetted by mismanagement by the same government officials who were entrusted with the job of enforcing the original treaty. They were aided by surveyors who modified old maps at the expense of the Kahnawake people. Modern cessations were also forced upon the tribe to make way for a railway, hydro-electric dams, highways, bridges, and, finally, the Seaway. This has permanently severed the ancient relationship with the land and the river enjoyed by these original inhabitants. The people have suffered in many ways as their old seasonal continuities, energetic, subsistence lifestyle, and food ways were lost along with access to the river.

Moreover, it didn't take long for the unintended consequences to appear. Invasive, destructive new species arrived in the Great Lakes and in the St. Lawrence. Now, Zebra and Quagga mussels clog freshwater intake pipes for the large midwestern cities that ring the lakes. Sea lamprey kill many sport (and regional food staple) fish. They have also been known to attach themselves to swimmers. The Round Goby, arriving in Black Sea bilgewater from Eurasia, poisons river bottoms with botulism, which then infects the environment and kills native diving birds. The Goby also has a nasty habit of chowing down on juvenile native species of the prized sportfish and on that original First Nation's staple, the once-plentiful White Fish.  A reedy invasive, Phragmites (Phragmites australis ssp australis) look pretty, but these now grow in thick mats and smother native plants--including the smaller native Phragmite species--upsetting the wetland food chain necessary for many North American foundation species of plants, fish and animals. 

This great Seaway, built at an (estimated) cost of 5 1/2 Billion dollars of today's money, has proved, like many past public works, a blessing for some and a curse for others. Capital wealth has been generated, certainly. The pay-off has been huge for the company owners, for stockholders as well as the workers who, (before our heavy manufacturing base collapsed) benefited with high standards of living in midwestern cities like Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Toledo and Sarnia. 

Once again, the old adage, "Man proposes; God disposes" has proved both true and apt.

~~Juliet Waldron  
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The barge image above
Image: Wikipedia (public domain)
US government agency DOT
By 20px|link=User:Kcida10|Kcida10 Kcida10 (talk) (Uploads). - https://www.transportation.gov/fastlane/new-years-eve-ends-seaway-navigation-season, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47277919




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