Riendeau A Roger E. Brief History of Canada

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

While Herjolfsson apparently had no desire to explore the lands he

sighted, his reports about its dense forests generated some interest in

Greenland, where wood was in short supply. Around 1001, Leif Eriks-

son, the son of Greenland colonizer Erik the Red, sailed west to inves-

tigate the resources of this strange territory. He and his crew therefore

became the ﬁ rst known Europeans to set foot on North American soil.

Norse sagas indicate that Eriksson’s expedition ﬁ rst landed in a place

which he called Helluland, meaning “land of ﬂ at stones,” now believed

to be either the southern coast of Bafﬁ n Island or the northern coast of

Labrador. The expedition then sailed southward, landing at a place that

Eriksson called Markland, or “wooded land,” probably the central or

southern coast of Labrador. The third landfall was called Vinland,

which could mean “wine land,” “vine land,” “fruitful land,” or “grass-

land.” Modern historians and geographers have variously located Vin-

land from southern Labrador to Florida. After wintering in Vinland and

exploring the area further, Eriksson and his crew returned to Green-

land with a cargo of timber, vines (valued as fasteners in shipbuilding),

and “wineberries” (likely currants, gooseberries, or cranberries).

While Leif Eriksson never returned to Vinland, several Norse expe-

ditions were launched from Greenland to establish settlements in the

new western lands during the ﬁ rst decade of the 11th century. Leif

Eriksson’s brother Thorvald led an expedition to Vinland in 1004. The

following year the ﬁ rst recorded contact between Europeans and native

North Americans ended in violence. As they explored the coastline,

Eriksson and his men encountered and murdered a small group of

“skraelings,” as the sagas called them, a word that may be translated as

“wretches” or, as later Europeans would say, “savages.” In an ensuing

retaliatory skirmish, Eriksson was killed by a native arrow, and his men

retreated to Greenland.

Perhaps the most ambitious colonizing venture was led by Icelander

Thorﬁ nn Karlsefni, who brought over 160 settlers about 1011. The

colonists bartered with local Natives, but conﬂ ict again erupted, and the

Norse were driven back to Greenland within two years. A ﬁ nal attempt

to colonize Vinland was led by Leif Eriksson’s half sister, Freydis, but it

too ended in bloody confrontation among the settlers and the Natives.

Although there were no further colonizing efforts, Norse traders from

Greenland periodically returned to acquire timber until about the mid-

14th century when the Greenland settlements were abandoned.

Knowledge of the western exploits of the Norse was derived from the

Greenlanders’ Saga and Erik the Red’s Saga, both of which consist of

stories passed down orally from generation to generation before they

were written down in the late 12th and middle 13th centuries, respec-

tively. Accordingly, the sagas were designed to serve more of a literary

than a historical purpose, with the result that the distinction between

fact and legend often became blurred. Not until 1960 did archaeologists

unearth indisputable evidence of Norse settlement at L’Anse aux Mead-

ows on the northern tip of Newfoundland. Whether this site was Leif

Eriksson’s Vinland, the Karlsefni colony, or some other unknown set-

tlement, it was clear that the Norse had visited Canada at least ﬁ ve

centuries earlier than had any other Europeans.

Renewed European Interest in the New World

In the late 15th century, Europeans discovered the New World for a

third time. Because the native experience was unrecorded and the

Norse sagas had disappeared until they were rediscovered at the end of

the 16th century, European explorers beginning with Columbus had to

approach the New World with little or no awareness of the routes and

discoveries of their predecessors. The revival of interest in the New

World once again originated by accident rather than by design. In fact,

the grand design of the age was not to ﬁ nd a new world but to reach an

ancient world. Since ancient times, the Indies—an all-encompassing

term for southern and eastern Asia including India and China—had

been a source of goods that Europeans valued highly: silks and other

ﬁ ne textiles, precious gemstones, and pungent and fragrant spices.

Peppers, nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves were vital in preserving and

improving the taste of food, and especially in the aging of meat in the

absence of refrigeration. But European access to these desirable com-

modities was restricted by the rising Islamic empire that had gained

control of the overland routes to East Asia used by Marco Polo and

other Europeans in the 13th century. To the increasingly powerful

nation-states of 15th-century western Europe, economic and military

supremacy was bound up in the quest for a direct sea route to the Indies

that would bypass the intricate and costly Muslim trade monopoly

(Morison 1971, 1994; Quinn 1977).

Portugal took the lead in the race to the east when Bartholomeu Diaz

successfully circumnavigated the southern tip of Africa in 1488, and

within 10 years Vasco da Gama had crossed the Indian Ocean to reach

India. Meanwhile, rival Spain supported the expedition of Italian navi-

gator Christopher Columbus who maintained that, because the world

was round, it was possible to reach East Asia by sailing west. He was so

convinced that he had reached India at the end of his ﬁ rst voyage in

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

1492 that he called the Native people “Indians,” a designation that

remains common. Columbus’s voyage not only intensiﬁ ed the maritime

rivalry between Spain and Portugal but also raised questions about the

rights of the two Catholic nations to evangelize the Native peoples of

the recently “discovered” territories. Accordingly, in 1493 Pope Alex-

ander VI established a “line of demarcation,” modiﬁ ed slightly by the

Treaty of Tordesillas the following year, whereby all lands lying to the

west of the line were under the jurisdiction of Spain while those lying

to the east belonged to Portugal. This division placed some of the

Atlantic region of Canada and much of Brazil within the Portuguese

sphere of inﬂ uence.

Having actually discovered the Caribbean Islands, Central America,

and South America during his four voyages, Columbus still believed

that he had reached Asia by the time another Italian navigator, Giovanni

Caboto (subsequently anglicized as John Cabot), sailed from England

on a westward voyage across the north Atlantic in 1497. On June 24,

1497, Caboto landed somewhere along the coast of Labrador, New-

foundland, or Cape Breton Island, thus marking the ﬁ rst recorded

landfall on the North American mainland since the Norse voyages.

Claiming the land for England (although he planted the ﬂ ags of both

England and Venice), Caboto

explored what he believed to be

the northeastern coast of China.

He did, however, make two dis-

coveries that would spur him on

to further exploration and that

would be signiﬁ cant for the

future development of the conti-

nent. First, he found the Grand

Banks of Newfoundland, a fertile

breeding ground for cod. The sea

so swarmed with ﬁ sh that the

crew could catch them with bas-

kets let down on ropes from the

deck of the ship. Second, Caboto

came upon a large passage, the

Gulf of St. Lawrence, which he

believed was a direct route to the

heartland of China. Encouraged

by these ﬁ ndings, he returned

triumphantly to England, where-

This medallion designed by Carlo Barrera

Pezzi in 1881 commemorates Italian navigator

Giovanni Caboto, his name subsequently

anglicized as John Cabot, who made the ﬁ rst

recorded landing along the Atlantic coast of

Canada in 1497 and claimed Newfoundland

and its ﬁ sheries for England.

(Library and

Archives Canada C-005136)

upon the king rewarded him for reaching this “new found land” by

sponsoring a second voyage in 1498. The expedition never returned,

and it is believed that Caboto likely perished somewhere off the coast

of Newfoundland. Despite the failure to reach Asia, Caboto’s voyages

are signiﬁ cant for establishing England’s claim to the Atlantic Coast of

North America and for stimulating further interest in pursuing a north-

ern sea route to Asia (McGhee 1989).

The rich cod ﬁ shing grounds discovered by Caboto soon attracted

Portuguese, Spanish, English, French, and Basque ﬁ shing ﬂ eets seek-

ing to satisfy a market created in predominantly Catholic Europe,

where abstinence from meat was decreed for more than 150 days a

year. From March to October of each year, upwards of 10,000 ﬁ sher-

men would gather in the waters off the coast of Newfoundland and

Cape Breton Island before returning to Europe with their catch. The

Portuguese and Spanish ﬁ shing ﬂ eets, using the “green” or “wet”

method of preservation, remained offshore where they caught and

heavily salted the ﬁ sh directly onboard ship. The French and English

ﬂ eets, using the “dry” or “shore” method of preservation, took their

catch ashore to be dried on racks or “ﬂ akes,” which meant that the ﬁ sh

needed only a light salting to avoid spoilage during the long voyage

home (Innis 1978).

The huts and storehouses that the “dry” ﬁ shermen built as they

tended their cod-strewn drying racks during the summer in effect

became the ﬁ rst semblance of European settlement, however imperma-

nent and anonymous, since the Norse efforts ﬁ ve centuries before. The

French ﬁ shing stations were scattered along the northern and southern

shores of Newfoundland and perhaps on the Cape Breton and mainland

Nova Scotia coasts, while the English concentrated on the eastern coast

of Newfoundland, particularly around the Avalon Peninsula. The cod

ﬁ shing ﬂ eets were joined by Basque whalers who from July to mid-

January established their own shore stations in the Strait of Belle Isle

between the Newfoundland mainland and Labrador. Whale oil found a

ready market in Europe as a source of light; an all-purpose lubricant;

and an additive to drugs, soap, and numerous other products. To these

temporary ﬁ shing and whaling stations, local Natives came to exchange

their furs and beaver robes for European metal goods and textiles, a

prelude to the trading links that would open up the northern American

frontier in the next century.

While countless ﬁ shing and whaling ﬂ eets singularly operated in

relative historical obscurity throughout the 16th century, the quest

for a northern sea route to Asia continued to capture the public

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

imagination in Europe. The Portuguese, believing that the Atlantic

Coast of North America lay east of the papal line of demarcation and

was therefore under their sphere of inﬂ uence, sought to complement

their eastward route to India around Africa with a westward passage.

An expedition led by Gaspar Côrte-Real explored the North Atlantic

coastline from Greenland to Newfoundland in 1500. He identiﬁ ed the

forests of the region as a valuable supply of timber for masts and ships

and the Native peoples as promising sources of slaves comparable to

west Africa. When he returned to the Labrador coast in 1501, Côrte-

Real abducted 57 Natives and shipped them back to Portugal with his

brother Miguel. Like Caboto, Gaspar Côrte-Real and his crew never

returned from this second voyage, and the same fate befell his brother,

who came back to search for him in 1502. Around 1520 João Alvarez

Fagundes explored the southern coast of Newfoundland and the Gulf

of St. Lawrence with a view toward establishing a colony called Cabo

Bretão. Probably located on Cape Breton Island, this colony appears

to have been short-lived as a result of clashes with the local Natives.

Although no trace of the colony has ever been found and little is

known about it, Portugal’s Cabo Bretão seems to have been the ﬁ rst

European colony established north of Florida since the time of the

Norse. But after the failure of this colony, the Portuguese—except for

those seafarers who annually ﬁ shed the Grand Banks and the coastal

waters off Newfoundland—lost interest in North America.

By the 1520s it was becoming clearer that the land that Columbus

and Caboto had discovered was not an extension of Asia. When Span-

ish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed a narrow strip of land in

Panama and sighted the Paciﬁ c Ocean in 1513, it became apparent that

a land mass of undetermined size lay between Europe and Asia. Ferdi-

nand Magellan’s ill-fated voyage around the world from 1519 to 1522,

during which he traveled westward around the southern tip of South

America and across the vast expanse of the Paciﬁ c Ocean before reach-

ing Southeast Asia, was further conﬁ rmation that America was a dis-

tinct continent. Still to be determined was the northern extent of this

continental land mass.

At this point France decided to enter the race to East Asia after hav-

ing long focused its foreign policy on the Mediterranean. The ﬁ rst

French voyages to North America had been made by Jean Denys and

Thomas Aubert, each of whom explored the eastern coast of New-

foundland in 1506 and 1508, respectively. The seven Beothuk whom

Aubert apparently brought back to France were objects of curiosity, but

not enough to sustain the interest of the French monarchy. Magellan’s

expedition, however, stimulated the interest of King Francis I who

sought to challenge his arch rival, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V

[King Charles I of Spain], by ﬁ nding a more direct route to the riches

of Asia than by the circumnavigation of South America. Thus, Francis

I gave his support to an expedition led by yet another Italian mariner,

Giovanni da Verrazano, who in 1524 explored the Atlantic coastline

from Florida to Newfoundland. Verrazano hoped to ﬁ nd either an isth-

mus dividing the Atlantic Ocean from the Paciﬁ c, such as Balboa had

found in Panama, or a strait across the northern tip of the continent

corresponding to the one Magellan had discovered at the southern end.

But after exploring nearly 2,000 miles of continental shoreline, Verra-

zano came to the disappointing, albeit important, conclusion that the

Atlantic and Paciﬁ c Oceans were not connected in the Northern Hemi-

sphere, and in fact that they were separated by a body of land not con-

nected to Asia. In effect, Verrazano heralded the existence of a new

continent, North America.

Because most of this new continent lay west of the papal line of

demarcation, Spain was anxious to investigate its potential. Spain

immediately hired Portuguese navigator Esteban Gomez to explore the

Atlantic coast from Newfoundland to Florida in 1524–25. Like the

Côrte-Reals, Gomez abducted several Native people along the New

England or Nova Scotia coast and took them back to Spain to sell as

slaves. The Spanish king was not impressed and freed the 58 Natives

who reached Spain alive. Disappointed with the results of its northern

expeditions, Spain soon found it more proﬁ table to concentrate its

exploration and colonization efforts south of Florida.

While the existence of North America was common knowledge in

western Europe by the 1530s, the nature and extent of the new conti-

nent, beyond a superﬁ cial awareness of its eastern coastline, remained

a profound mystery. Being as much entrepreneurs as adventurers, these

early explorers were more anxious to bring back the “riches” of Asia

that their ﬁ nancial backers expected than they were in recording and

mapping their discoveries. The sense of disappointment that pervaded

their voyages may account for the failure of the explorers to keep pre-

cise records of their ﬁ ndings or of succeeding generations to ensure the

survival of vital historical documents and artifacts. As a result, the story

of the earliest moments of the European rediscovery of the northern

American frontier is little more than a rough sketch pieced together

from diverse fragments of empirical evidence, deductive reasoning, and

educated speculation. Fortunately, the story becomes a little clearer

with the voyages of Jacques Cartier.

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

The Voyages of Jacques Cartier

Unlike his recent predecessors who had sought to circumnavigate

North America, Jacques Cartier set sail from Saint-Malo, France, on

April 20, 1534, with the intent of ﬁ nding a sea route through the con-

tinental land mass to Asia. In the process, he became the ﬁ rst European

to penetrate inland and to leave a detailed surviving account of his

adventures, beginning with Voyages au Canada en 1534.

Having likely accompanied Verrazano on his voyages in the previous

decade, Cartier, with his expedition of two ships and 61 men, reached

Newfoundland within 20 days. When he passed through the Strait of

Belle Isle and into the Gulf of St. Lawrence 10 days later, he was in

waters previously uncharted by Europeans. He surveyed the southern

coast of Labrador, referring to it as “the land God gave Cain” (Biggar

1924, xxi), after the biblical wasteland. Following the west coast of

Newfoundland, he then veered southwestward to explore the coasts of

Prince Edward Island, eastern New Brunswick, and the Gaspé Penin-

sula. On July 3, his hopes of ﬁ nding a passage to Asia were aroused by

the sight of a large opening in

the shoreline, which turned out

to be Chaleur Bay, dividing New

Brunswick from the Gaspé Pen-

insula of Quebec.

Here, Cartier met the native

Micmac people, who “set up a

great clamour and made frequent

signs to us to come on shore,

holding up to us some furs on

sticks” (Biggar 1924, 20). The

eagerness of the Natives to trade

their furs for metal goods sug-

gests that Cartier’s expedition

was probably preceded by Euro-

pean ﬁ shermen who left no

record of their contact. Never-

theless, Cartier’s visit represents

the ﬁ rst recorded exchange of

furs between Natives and Euro-

peans and the ﬁ rst trading

exchange of any kind since the

Norse voyages. Proceeding north

to the Bay of Gaspé, which brieﬂ y

This engraving by Théophile Hamel (1817–70)

portrays Jacques Cartier, who sighted the St.

Lawrence River in 1534–35 and claimed

Quebec for France.

(Library and Archives

Canada C-007298)

appeared to be the elusive passage to Asia, Cartier encountered Iro-

quoian people who had come from the interior to ﬁ sh and hunt seal.

When he raised a cross to claim possession of the land for France on

July 24, Cartier not only established trade relations with the Iroquois

but also persuaded a reluctant Chief Donnacona to allow his two sons

to make the return journey to France so that they could serve as inter-

preters and guides on the next voyage.

From the Natives, Cartier heard highly embellished but intriguing

tales of a great waterway leading to the west and the rich kingdoms to

be found in that direction. When he sailed north to Anticosti Island,

Cartier gazed upon the St. Lawrence River, which he mistook as a strait

leading to the Paciﬁ c Ocean. Despite the visions of fantastic Oriental

empires offering gold, silver, jewels, and spices, it was now August, and

concerns over the approach of autumn storms on the Atlantic prompted

the decision to turn back to France.

Cartier’s exploits, while falling short of expectations, sufﬁ ciently

intrigued King Francis I, especially when supported by the imaginative

stories of Donnacona’s sons, Taignoagny and Domagaya. The king

therefore endorsed Cartier’s request to undertake a larger expedition of

three ships and 110 men, which left Saint Malo on May 19, 1535. After

a journey of 50 days, Cartier reached the Gulf of St. Lawrence and

explored its north shore for several weeks in search of a passage to Asia.

On August 13, as he approached Anticosti Island, Taignoagny and

Domagaya informed him that the route to kanata, an Iroquoian word

meaning village or settlement, lay to the south of the island. In fact,

they were referring to their own village of Stadacona, on the future site

of Quebec City. But Cartier misinterpreted “Canada” to be the name of

the territory ruled by Donnacona, chief of Stadacona. Realizing that it

was not a strait as he had surmised on his ﬁ rst journey, Cartier also

referred to the river he was entering as the “Rivière du Canada.” But

three days earlier, he had named a bay north of Anticosti Island “Saint-

Laurent,” after the Christian martyr whose feast day it was. By the next

century, the entire gulf and the great river were commonly referred to

as the St. Lawrence (Trudel 1973).

Cartier continued up the St. Lawrence River to Stadacona where on

September 7, he renewed his acquaintance with Chief Donnacona.

Viewing the French as powerful and valuable trading partners, Don-

nacona objected to their intention to proceed inland to a larger Iroquois

village at Hochelega. The Stadaconans apparently had the customary

right to a monopoly over upriver trafﬁ c, and Donnacona recognized the

advantages of assuming the broker’s role in the trade of furs from the

ACCIDENTAL REDISCOVERY

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

interior Native groups for precious European metal goods. Ignoring

Donnacona’s wishes and thus foreshadowing future European reaction

to Native land and trading rights, Cartier arrived at Hochelega on Octo-

ber 2. There he climbed to the summit of a nearby hill, which he called

“Mont Réal” (Mount Royal), and gazed in the distance at the “Lachine”

(meaning China) rapids that ended any hopes of further progress by

ship. Now nearly 1,000 miles inland, Cartier learned from his Native

informants that the St. Lawrence River stretched another three months’

journey westward, thereby giving Europeans their ﬁ rst sense of the

vastness of the continent. He also learned from the Natives at Hochel-

ega about the Ottawa River, which led to a “land of gold and silver.”

Allowing for the fertile Native imagination and wishful European inter-

pretations, stories of the rich inland kingdoms probably had some fac-

tual basis, referring to the mineral deposits of the Canadian Shield.

With the dream of ﬁ nding a passage to Asia fading, Cartier returned

downriver to Stadacona, where he would make a grim discovery. Too

late in the year to risk the return voyage to France, Cartier decided to

spend the winter at Stadacona, blissfully unaware of its length and

severity. Deceived by the heat of past summers and a latitude more than

two degrees south of Paris, Cartier and his men were not prepared for

a nightmarish ﬁ ve-month winter in which their fort and ships were

buried under several feet of snow and ice. Furthermore, one-quarter of

Cartier’s crew died of scurvy before they learned of a native cure con-

sisting of boiling white cedar bark and needles to make a herbal tonic

rich in ascorbic acid (vitamin C). In preparing for a spring departure,

Cartier strained relations with the natives even further by abducting

Donnacona, his two sons, and seven of their companions in order to

retain tribal support in anticipation of a third French expedition to the

St. Lawrence region. Eventually, Donnacona agreed to accompany

Cartier to France on the promise that the 10 Iroquois would return

safely the following year. None of the Iroquois would survive to return

to their homeland.

So unimpressed was King Francis I with the accomplishments of

Cartier’s second voyage that ﬁ ve years would pass before a third expedi-

tion received royal support. In the meantime, Francis I continued to be

preoccupied with waging war against Spain, which was challenging

French rights to exploit the wealth of the New World on the basis of

tradition. In response, the French monarch invoked the new doctrine

of imperialism to assert his right to exploit lands not previously occu-

pied by another Christian power. In essence, Francis argued, national

claims to territory in the Americas and elsewhere would henceforth rest

not on papal decrees but on prior discovery, conquest, and settlement.

Accordingly, to retain exclusive rights to the resources of Canada,

France decided to establish a strategically located colony. The king

sought to enhance the stature of this endeavor by designating a noble-

man, Jean-François de la Roque de Roberval, to lead the expedition and

relegating Cartier, a common sea captain, to commander of the ﬂ eet.

The recruitment of potential colonists, however, proved to be so difﬁ -

cult that the royal prisons became a major source of Canada’s ﬁ rst

French settlers.

With Roberval’s three ships expected to join him later, Cartier left

Saint-Malo with ﬁ ve ships on May 23, 1541, and reached Stadacona

exactly three months later. Cartier admitted to the Iroquois that Donna-

cona, an old man, had died of natural causes but falsely announced that

the other nine Iroquois whom he had taken to France were not only alive

and well but also had become so prosperous that they preferred to remain

there permanently. Unsure of whether or not the Iroquois believed him,

Cartier decided to settle his 150 colonists at Cap Rouge, some 10 miles

upriver from Stadacona. This distance was insufﬁ cient to prevent cultural

conﬂ ict. The Iroquois kept the French under constant siege and eventu-

ally killed 35 colonists. After a vain attempt to get past the rapids below

Hochelega and a winter as bitter as the one six years before, Cartier and

the remaining colonists set sail for France in June 1542 with a cargo of

what they believed to be gold and diamonds extracted from the nearby

cliffs. Encountering Roberval’s expedition at St. John’s harbor in New-

foundland, Cartier ignored orders to return to Cap Rouge and escaped

during the night to continue his trip to France. In a ﬁ nal note of bitter

irony, the gold and diamonds that he triumphantly offered the king of

France turned out to be iron pyrite and quartz.

Meanwhile, Roberval, oblivious to Cartier’s ordeal, reestablished the

colony at Cap Rouge and resumed the futile attempts to get past the

Lachine Rapids. Further discouraged by Iroquois hostility and another

harsh winter during which 50 out of 200 colonists died of scurvy,

Roberval abandoned the settlement in the summer of 1543. The dismal

failure of the ﬁ rst French colony in the New World fostered an image

of Canada as an inhospitable and uninhabitable country with little of

value to offer the economy of France. When not distracted by civil war

and conﬂ ict with Spain, French imperial interest for the rest of the cen-

tury focused on the tropical and subtropical regions to the south, in the

Caribbean (Eccles 1969, 1990). Only the ﬁ shing ﬂ eets that came annu-

ally to the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence

sustained the French presence in 16th-century Canada.

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