Episode 3.2- Turtle Island, Interrupted (REDUX): The French Boy in the Smoke

🎧 Episode 3.2 – The Boy in the Smoke

🔥 Champlain, Brouage, and the Fire Before the Flame

Before he was a mapmaker, a mediator, or a founder of nations, Samuel de Champlain was a boy — born in smoke, salt, and fire.

In Episode 3.2 of Canadian Grit: North of Ordinary, we return to 16th-century France, where the fortified Atlantic port of Brouage churned with war, ambition, and the scent of cannon smoke. Here, in a village gripped by the Wars of Religion and shaped by the crashing tides of empire, a young Champlain grew up watching his world burn... and quietly dreaming of another way.

This episode pulls back the veil on the early life of a boy who would one day change the course of history. Raised in the chaos of civil war, surrounded by butchers, fromagiers, and soldiers marching to opposing gods, Champlain was forged in a crucible of violence and uncertainty. 

But rather than becoming hardened, he grew curious. 

Observant. 

Strategic. 

And ultimately, hopeful.

Part immersive history, part poetic meditation on place and becoming, Episode 3.2 explores how the boy became the man, and how the man would someday offer a radically different vision for what a “New World” could be.

Champlain wasn’t an accident. He was an outcome.
And his origin story matters now more than ever.

🎧 Listener Prompt:
What did the world you were born into teach you — and what have you chosen to carry forward anyway?

🔍 Keywords:
Samuel de Champlain, Brouage, Religious Wars, French History, Turtle Island, Colonialism, Continuity and Change, Popular History Podcast, Identity, Place, Explorer Mindset, Canadian Grit, Resilience, Adam Shoalts, Hybrid Reality Theory (Jackson, 2025)

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Facebook: Canadian Grit Page
Facebook Community Group: Join the Discussion

If this story moved you — or reminded you of your own grit — I’d love to hear from you.

Know someone with an untold story? Reach out. Let’s give it voice.

Thank you for being here. It means more than you know.

— Jamie

Transcript

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go. Ahoy me mateys, this is your host of Canadian Grit, Jamie Jackson. Welcome back to episode 3.2, The Daunt of Modern Canada, Turtle Island Interrupted Redux, The Boy in the Smoke. We've reached nine countries on five continents around the world. This is already much bigger than I could have anticipated, and you being here has made it everything and more than I could have imagined. Thank you for coming back and checking out these stories and for learning more about us, yourself, and Canada 2.0, what we're becoming. Last time on Canadian Grit, North of Ordinary, we wandered to the edge, from the back of a turtle to the edge of the known world at the time. We paddled through myth and memory, tracing what it means to dare greatly. From Brian and Hatchet crash landing into survival, to Adam Schultz river mapping with a compass and sheer will, we asked, what makes a person step forward into the unknown, alone? Today we go back, way back, to a boy on the shores of Western France, a boy shaped not just by parents or books, but by a place, a place called Brouage. Brouage was not just a town, it was a crucible. Brouage in the 1500s wasn't the postcard kind of France you might imagine today. It was grit, salt, smoke, and blood. Brouage was a strategic port bracing against the Atlantic, fortified in stone and cannons, reeking of brine, wood smoke, and sweat. It was a town that lived by tides and died by gunpowder. Markets buzzed with butchers and

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cheesemongers, blacksmiths, and barrel makers. Fishermen yelled coarse jokes in the same breath as their prayers. Horses clocked through muddy lanes where plague crept just beneath the cobbles, and everyone kept an eye on the horizon, not just for ships, but for war. The air itself in Brouages was electric, charged with fear and fanaticism. The wars of religion gripped France like a fever, the Catholics and Huguenots slaughtering each other in the name of salvation. In Brouages, they didn't just hear about it, they lived it. And a boy, young Samuel, he breathed it in. Imagine him walking the narrow ramparts, smelling car, gunpowder. watching ships load barrels of salt and sail into the unknown. Soldiers clattered past on crooked cobblestones. Explorers, if spoken of at all, were called either madmen or martyrs, sometimes both. They won glory if they came back rich, and silence if they didn't come back at all. For Champlain, it wasn't a fantasy. It was fertilizer. Brouage wasn't a backdrop, it was his native soil. Its tides carved the first maps into his mind. Its wars carved the lines in his soul. It planted a seed that there must be more than endless conquest. That maybe, just maybe, something different could grow across the sea. And so, this is where we begin today, not on a ship, not in a battle, but with a boy. A boy born in fire, salt, and uncertainty. A boy whose life would change the course of a continent and all of history, because he first learned what not to do by watching his country tear itself apart. This episode, we meet the child who became the founder. We walk through the grid of brouage and we ask, When your world is burning, how do you plant something that lasts? A young Samuel de Champlain grows up in the fortified port of Brouages on France's Atlantic coast in the late 1500s. The air smells of salt and wood smoke. Cannon fire echoes in the distance as France's religious civil wars rage on. Champlain's father, Antoine, is a sea captain, and his mother, Marguerite, comes from a seafaring family. The boy's childhood is steeped in the rhythms of tides and shipwork. By lantern light, he pours over nautical charts and listens to sailors' tales. France is in chaos. Catholics and Huguenot Protestants slaughter each other in the wars of religion. Between 1562 and 1598, even as famine and plague stalk the land. In Brouages, a town fiercely contested in these wars, young Champlain witnesses the cost of fanaticism. This brutal backdrop shapes his soul. He learns the art of navigation and mapmaking from his father, but also an early lesson in humanity. He sees neighbors kill over faith and resolves that there must be a better way. Years later, he reflects that these formative experiences gave him a, quote, aversion to war whenever possible, quote, and a surprising tolerance for differing faiths. Even as a devout Catholic, Champlain carries a humanist streak unusual for his age, believing that peace and coexistence might accomplish more than the sword. Little does he know that his outlook will lay the groundwork for a new kind of colony in the wilds of North America. Champlain comes of age amid bloodshed. In the 1590s, as a young soldier, he fights for King Henry IV, a former Huguenot who famously converted, saying, quote, And he was fighting against the Ultra-Catholic League. Champlain serves as a quartermaster in Brittany, Bretagne, a region in western France where the war's brutality ekes. Imagine him trudging through muddy fields, strewn with corpses, the winter rain mixing with gunpowder smoke. He witnesses terrible atrocities, villages put to the torch, innocence butchered in the name of God. One can picture him turning away in disgust as fanatic mercenaries massacre peasants, their cries ringing in his ears. These horrors leave an indelible mark. Champlain proves himself a capable soldier, but he hates what he sees. By the time Henry IV brings peace with the Edict of Nantes in 1598, granting limited tolerance to Protestants and a treaty with Spain that same year, Champlain is battle-hardened yet weary of war. He carries scars, both physical and mental. This veteran's distaste and disdain for senseless violence will guide how he later approaches exploration and colonization, preferring negotiation over conquest. For now, however, France's religious wars end, but the young man's adventures are only beginning. Peace with Spain opens an unexpected door. Champlain's skills and bravery earn him a place on a daring voyage beyond Europe's bloody horizon, a way out. In 1599, Champlain finds himself aboard a Spanish ship, the Saint-Julien, tasked with returning Spanish troops home under the new peace. He sails out of a French harbor not under his own flag but as an observer with his uncle and following Spain's sprawling sea lanes. Crossing the Bay of Biscay and skirting Iberia's coast, he enters the wider world of empire. The scene shifts to the tropics, suffocating heat, water, the color of emeralds. Champlain's ship anchors off Hispaniola and Mexico, Spain's colonies in the New World. Here, he confronts a different kind of horror. He walks cobbled streets under the shadow of cathedrals where gilded clergy preach piety, even as enslaved Africans and indigenous locals labour in chains. Champlain observes the Spanish colonial system up close and he is appalled. He notes the torment of enslaved people on sugar plantations and the Inquisition's iron grip. His own writings record, quote, horror and disgust, quote, at the Spaniards' cruel treatment of indigenous peoples and African slaves, enforced by a fanatical religious tyranny. This is a moral turning point. The young Frenchman, survivor of France's religious wars, now recoils at Spanish colonial cruelty, yet he also learns. Over two years, Champlain maps Caribbean coasts, studies flora and fauna, meaning plants and animals, and he even sketches plans for a canal in Panama. Anyone ever heard of the Panama Canal? I mean, it's much later, but here we have a visionary. Ever curious, Champlain records everything, geography, peoples, resources. In secret, he drafts a detailed report, his, quote, brief discours, a brief speech, for King Henry IV, quote, When Champlain returns to France in 1601, he presents the king with intelligence on Spain's empire. The reward is immediate. Henry IV grants him a pension and a role at court. Champlain has proven himself not just a soldier, but a skilled navigator, spy, and chronicler. He's seen the heights of Spanish power and the depths of its brutality. Armed with this hard-won knowledge and a conviction that France can chart a more humane path, Champlain is ready to carve out France's own place in the New World. Spring, 1603. Champlain stands on the deck of La Bonne Renommée, known as the Good Renown, as it departs en fleur, France, bound west for New France. The ship is a compact, stout-bellied bark of about 90 feet in length, roughly the length of a modern basketball court. Three masts carry patched sails that billow in the Atlantic wind. For Champlain, this is the first voyage carrying him toward the lands of legend and myth he's only ever heard about. The journey is arduous, to say the least. The ship pitches violently in the North Atlantic gales. Sailors tie themselves to their bunks to avoid being thrown across the hold. Weeks pass with no sight of land, only an endless grey ocean. Drinking water turns foul. Food spoils. The men gnaw rock-hard ship's biscuit and pray to stave off scurvy and starvation. Some whisper old superstitions. Beyond the horizon lurk sea monsters who are the edge of the world. Even in 1603, crossing the Atlantic remains a very fearsome proposition, a plunge into the unknown. Yet Champlain is undaunted. By now he's made over two dozen Atlantic crossings in his life. He's a veteran mariner in his early 30s, and his mind brims with purpose. France has lagged behind Spain, but Henry IV's court is now interested in the rumored riches of the north. What drives them? Well, partly the myth of a northwest passage. Champlain and his shipmates scan the waves and recall stories of Jacques Cartier's voyages 60 years earlier, of great rivers that might lead to a China Sea in the heart of the continent. Indigenous traders told Cartier of a vast freshwater sea to the west. Perhaps it's the gateway to Asia. Could Champlain be the one to find this miracle route? And there's also the lure of furs and fisheries. Schools of cod and whale have drawn Basque and Breton fishermen across for years. And fine beaver pelts from the New World command high prices in Paris. Still, many in Europe scoff at these ventures. As one Spanish observer sneered about the frigid north, quote, as regards settling in the Northern Sea, there is nothing to envy in this for it is of no value. And if the French take it, necessity will compel them to abandon it, quote. But Champlain disagrees. He senses potential where others see only ice and forest. Staring at the Western stars, he imagines a different kind of colony, one built on alliance rather than oppression. Champlain, one historian notes, had a crazy idea. Unlike previous colonizers, he'd act to make friends with original nations rather than antagonize them. That was a pretty radical vision for 1603, and it guides him through every uncertainty. After six long weeks at sea, La Bonne Renommée finally cites the low, pine-covered coast of Nova Scotia. Champlain's heart lifts. The mists part to reveal the wide mouth of a great river. Could it be the gateway to a new world? Perhaps a stage for an experiment in cooperation? The ship anchors at Tadoussac, a natural harbour where the Saguenay River meets the mighty St. Lawrence, Le Saint-Laurent. It is summer 1603. Champlain steps ashore onto pebble ground, becoming only one of a handful of Frenchmen in a vast land then called Kanata. He is greeted by an astonishing scene. Hundreds of Innu, Montagnier people, have gathered at this traditional trading spot. Their bark canoes crowd the coves laden with furs. Smoke from campfires curls into a crystalline blue sky. The French expedition's leader, François Gravet-Dupont, has been here before, but for Champlain, everything is new. The language, the faces tattooed and painted, the smell of spruce and roast venison in the air. No violence erupts. Instead, Champlain and the Innu leaders exchange gifts and greetings, each curious about the other. Before long, Champlain is invited to a grand feast, a tabagie, He sits cross-legged on the ground among Innu, Algonquin, and Mi'kmaq guests as platters of fish and game are shared. A pipe is lit and passed. Champlain partakes, smoke stinging his eyes as an elder rises to speak. Through a translator, Champlain learns of the land's riches and its peoples. He hears tantalizing tales of the great river stretching west and of immense lakes just beyond the Great Lakes, though no European has seen them yet. Opportunity, it seems, glimmers. Champlain already envisions this fertile region populated by French settlers and producing wealth for France. Quote, these lands could be colonized by French citizens and provide France with many resources and great wealth. He wrote in his journal after exploring hundreds of miles up the St. Lawrence. He notes that some indigenous nations seem friendly and eager to trade while others, notably the powerful Haudenosaunee Iroquois to the south, are rather hostile. Crucially, he observes that the local Montagnier and Algonquin are locked in a long war with the Iroquois. This sets the stage for alliances that will demand French loyalty in exchange for access and trust. Champlain departs North America that fall, in 1603, with new knowledge and new allies. He has mapped the great river's course past the sites of future Quebec and Montreal, confirming the strategic importance of the St. Lawrence. Back in France, Champlain wastes no time urging his superiors to act. If France does not plant a colony here, they will lose this window of opportunity. The lure of a northern land of plenty, rich in furs, fertile soil and perhaps that elusive path to Asia, has taken hold of him. Champlain is determined to return. The French crown heeds Champlain's advice, albeit cautiously. In 1604, King Henry grants a nobleman, Pierre Dugas Dumont, a trade monopoly and commission to establish a settlement. Champlain is brought on as its second-in-command. Their goal? Settle Acadia, now known as the coastal Maritimes, and find a base for trade. Champlain helps choose a site on a small river named Saint Croix, hoping it will be defensible and convenient. But the decision proves fateful. The first winter of 1604-1605 at Saint Croix is a nightmare. Snow buries the tiny fort, and supplies run incredibly low. The settlers, about 79 men, grow weak and apathetic. Then, scurvy strikes with a vengeance. Champlain writes, quote,"...of the dreadful malady that blackens gums and withers limbs." By spring, nearly half of the party is dead of scurvy and harsh weather. Frozen graves speckle the riverbank. Hopes of a thriving colony seem buried under the snow. In the spring thaw, Champlain and Dumont hastily relocate across the Bay of Fundy to a more sheltered spot named Port Royale, which is present-day Annapolis Royale, Nova Scotia. There, in 1605 to 1607, they build a new habitation. Conditions improve. Port Royal's climate is gentler, and Mi'kmaq neighbors help with food, but the colony still struggles. Champlain, ever restless and resourceful, spends these years charting the coast. He sails down into New England as far south as Cape Cod, marveling at tall forests and mapping every inlet. On one foray, he encounters and skirmishes with a group of Meskwaki, Fox, or perhaps Massachusetts warriors, a reminder that not all indigenous groups were welcome to intruders. Meanwhile, in France, political winds shift. Dumont loses his monopoly on the fur trade, undercutting the colony's funding. By 1607, Port Royal is abandoned, the settlers forced to pack up and sail home. It is a demoralizing failure, but not for Champlain. He's learned invaluable lessons. Lesson 1. The importance of choosing the right site. Somewhere less isolated, with access to established trade networks and indigenous allies. Lesson 2. No colony can survive without steady support from the mother country and local goodwill. Back in France, Champlain lobbies hard for one more chance. He argues that the St. Lawrence River, the gateway he first saw in 1603, is the ideal location for France's permanent foothold. His persistence pays off. In 1608, De Man, now operating with a royal license but staying in France, entrusts Champlain to lead a new expedition. This time, Champlain himself will be in charge on the ground, tasked with finally establishing France's colony in Canada. Summer, 1608. Champlain's ships, Don de Dieu, Gift of God, and La Bonne Renommée, glide up the St. Lawrence to an arrow point where the river cliffs pinch together. The local Algonquin call it Quebec, meaning where the river narrows. Champlain surveys the spot and deems it perfect. On July 3rd, 1608, he orders the men to begin clearing the firs and maples on the slope. Quote, I had once employed a part of our workmen in cutting them down to make a site for our settlement, Champlain writes. Another in sawing planks and another in digging the cellar. Quote, the forest rings with the echo of axes. Scene by scene, the Habitation de Quebec rises. A wooden fortification with three two-story buildings forming a tiny courtyard protected by a moat and palisade. They mount a single cannon on the riverside, more for show than real defense. Champlain personally helps map out gardens for wheat and rye, envisioning not just a trading post but a true colony where crops will grow and families will one day thrive. For now, Quebec is very small. Only 28 men survived the first summer. A handful more had started the journey but died or deserted. Not a single European woman was present. The settlement is an all-male bastion on the edge of a continent. Champlain knows this is a problem. Without women, no community can take root. But in 1608, it is simply too early. No investors want to send families yet. The first order of business is to survive and to secure the fur trade. The winter from 1608 to 1609 detests them cruelly. The cold is beyond what any European knew. Ice chokes the St. Lawrence. The men huddle in their wooden huts. huts as snow piles to the eaves. Scurvy returns the old foe. By spring, only eight of the 28 colonists are still alive. The rest lie in frozen graves. Champlain falls ill too, but he manages to recover, driven by an iron will. He refuses to abandon the site. When the river thaws, fresh supplies and men arrive just in time. Ybeck endures. Champlain's leadership is both pragmatic, practical, and inspired. He institutes strict cleanliness and ventilation to fight scurvy and rationing to stretch provisions. He also foils a mutiny during that first grim winter. A cartographer named Jean Duval plots to kill Champlain and sell Quebec, the Basque, for Spanish. Champlain though, wise as he is, he catches wind and he confronts the traitor. He has Duval executed and hung up in chains as a warning. Champlain's message is clear. Despite his preference for peace, he will not hesitate to act decisively to keep New France intact. As the weather warms and 1609 begins, Champlain stands at the fort's gate watching geese return and the great river break free. He has kept his tiny colony alive. Now, he turns his eyes to the interior, aware that Quebec's future hinges on relationships with the Indigenous nations surrounding them. Just as importantly, the fate of New France will depend on bringing more people, including women, to this shore. But first, Champlain must uphold a promise that will forever change the course of history. From the moment Champlain set foot in Canada, his new indigenous allies, the Innu, Algonquin, and Huron or Wendat, had one overriding question for him. Will you help us fight our mortal enemies, the Iroquois? By 1609, Champlain decides to honor the alliance. He knows that if France is to survive here, it must stand with its friends. So in late June 1609, Champlain and two fellow French musketeers join a war party of several hundred native warriors heading south into Iroquois territory, which is present-day upstate New York. They paddle down the Richelieu River beyond any European map and enter a long, narrow lake, today called Lake Champlain, after the man who first chronicled it. Champlain wears light armor and carries an arquebus, a matchbox firearm, but he's not fully confident. He writes in his journal that he prayed for God's grace in the coming battle. The chiefs Iroquois and Osha Stiguin, leading the Huron-Petite Nation warriors, are curious about Champlain's power. They talk of, quote, Orenda, quote, a spiritual strength every being possesses. Does this strange Frenchman have some strong Orenda? To find out, one chief makes a bold request on the eve of battle. Demonstrate the Arkbus. The Arkbus. Champlain agrees. In a nighttime display, he has his men fire their guns into the air. The thunderous shots startle the forest and leave the allies suitably impressed. Clearly, quote, guns had power, quote, and thus Champlain's arenda must be strong. Come dawn, the joint force encounters the enemy. A band of Mohawk Iroquois warriors, bristling with bows and clubs, both sides pause, eyeing each other across the clearing. The Iroquois chiefs, decorated in war paint and feathers, advance, astonished at the sight of three Europeans among the enemy ranks. Then, Kayasi walks. Champlain steps forward and raises his arquebus, braced on a stand. He takes careful aim at a cluster of the Mohawk leaders, who are marked out by their tall plume headdresses. He fires once. A blast tears through the morning mist. And immediately, two Mohawk chiefs fall dead, and another warrior is wounded by that single shot. The Iroquois, shocked by this deadly new weapon, waver. At that, dozens of Champlain's indigenous allies unleash a hail of arrows and charge with triumphant yells. The Mohawks flee in panic, never having seen firearms before. The skirmish is over almost as soon as it began. Champlain's first battle on American soil is a decisive victory. In killing those chiefs with his, quote, iron thunder, quote, Champlain has cemented an alliance and also ignited decades of enmity between France and the Iroquois Confederacy. That night, the war party celebrates boisterously, but Champlain's trial is not done. The Allies have captured a single Iroquois prisoner and they fully intend to make a gruesome example of him. They drag the captive, a young Mohawk man, back to their camp. As dusk falls, Champlain witnesses a scene from nightmares. Warriors prepare a ritual of torture that their cultures have practiced for generations in vengeance against hated foes. In a torchlight, they strip the prisoner and bind him to a stake. Then, quote, as many warriors came forward and claimed the victor's role of torturer, quote, Champlain recounts, each took a brand and burned this poor wretch a little at a time so as to make him suffer more torment. They stopped from time to time and threw water on his back. Then they tore out his nail and applied fire to the tips of his finger. The horrific torture unfolds over hours. Champlain is sick and this is cruelty on a scale he has never seen, not even in Europe. The screams of the victim echo through the dark woods. Feeling the fire, He would utter such loud cries that it was awful to hear, quote Champlain writes. Quote, then they, the torturers, would throw water over his body to make him suffer longer, quote. Champlain simply cannot bear it. He pleads with his allies to show mercy, but they insist he stay back. This is their ritual rite. At last, Champlain turns away in horror. Seeing this, the Huron warriors decide to allow Champlain a grim mercy. They permit him to end the prisoner's misery. Champlain raises his musket and shoots the captive through the head. A coup de grace, an act of mercy. The prisoner's suffering ceases, quote, rather than see him brutally treated any further, quote, Champlain notes. Yet even in death, the ritual continues. The Iroquois' corpse is dismembered. His head, arms, and legs take in his trophies. Some of the flesh is even cannibalized in a ceremonial display of contempt. Champlain is revolted to his core. Quote, he hated Indian torture. Quote, it offended his deepest ideals. Quote, here is the ultimate test of Champlain's resolve to build bridges. He sees that among his allies, violence is not just warfare but theater, bound by tradition, blood vengeance. a cycle that promises endless war. Champlain fears that such brutality will be a, quote, major obstacle to his grand design, quote, of peace in New France. And yet, Champlain understands he cannot simply impose European norms overnight. To the warriors, he showed respect by witnessing the ritual, however reluctantly, and by participating, only to offer mercy. It's a terrible bargain. Champlain gains the trust and gratitude of his allies, but at the cost of being drawn into their, quote, world of retribution, quote as he called it, shaken, he returns to Quebec after his campaign, haunted by what he saw. His alliance is now sealed in blood. The French and certain Algonquin and Huron peoples are bound together, for better or for worse. This newfound alliance will yield years of trade and relative security for New France, but also reprisals from the Iroquois, who will remember Champlain as the bringer of death from across the sea. Champlain's gamble, friendship with one group at the price of making enemies with another, will define Canada's early history. In his journal, Champlain does not flinch from describing the grisly details, including branding, irons, mutilation, even how women among the Allies proved, quote, the most ingenious in cruelty, quote, during the torture. His frank account published back in France shocks readers, yet Champlain concludes that such cruelty, however abhorrent, has logic in this land. It terrorizes foes. and fuels the cycle of vengeance, ensuring that war will continue until one side is utterly broken. In sum, Champlain's first war party experience strips away any romantic illusions and reveals the raw, brutal reality of frontier alliances. Still, he does not abandon his experiment. If anything, he becomes more determined to fortify his colony and gradually bring both European, and Indigenous peoples toward a more peaceful coexistence, as naive as that may sound from our perspective. In this gruesome baptism, Canadian history truly begins, in courage and violence, in hope and heartbreak. The following years see Champlain juggling multiple roles, explorer, diplomat, administrator, and even father figure to the fledgling colony of Quebec. He continues to venture deeper into the continent, In 1615, he travels with his Huron allies all the way to Lake Huron, expanding the map of Canada. He joins another assault on the Iroquois that year in present-day New York, during which Champlain is wounded by an arrow to the knee. He survives, spending a winter among the Huron to recover and cement friendships. Through all this, Quebec remains Champlain's base and home. It's a rudimentary settlement, a wooden fort, and some outbuildings perched below the tall cliff of Cap-Diamant. The early colonists are almost all men, fur traders, soldiers, interpreters, and a handful of artisans. There is not a single French family in the first years. This gender imbalance, as I mentioned earlier, begins to trouble Champlain. He knows that as long as New France is just a camp of bachelors and adventurers, it cannot truly grow. He begins to encourage some of his men to marry indigenous women in the meantime. to form bonds and to create families of a sort. Indeed, informal unions occur, yielding the first Métis children of French and indigenous parentage, a human blending of the two worlds. But the French authorities are hesitant to send women across the ocean or to officially sanction mixed marriages. Champlain tries to lead by example in a different way. In 1610, he takes a young bride, Hélène Boullée, the 12-year-old daughter of a wealthy French family. It takes place in a strategic marriage back in France Hélène's Huguenot father demands Champlain allow her to stay in France until she's older, for those of you who are worried. Champlain at this point is about 40 years old, but this alliance gives him status and connections. In 1620, Hélène finally does join her husband in Quebec, now about 16 years old, becoming one of the very first French women to set foot in the colony. Hélène is amazed and likely dismayed by the primitive conditions. A settlement of perhaps 60 Europeans, mostly rough men, clustered in the vast Canadian wilderness. Hélène stays only for four years before she returns to France for good. The hard life in Quebec was not what she imagined. Quebec's population in the 1610s to the 1620s grows painfully slowly. Champlain shuttles back and forth to France, pleading for royal support and funds to send more settlers. At times, he's forced to return to France to fight off rival fur trade companies or to lobby the king. In 1627, his efforts help convince Cardinal Richelieu to create the Compagnie des Cent Associés, a new company mandated to send hundreds of colonists, including women, to New France. It is a grand plan, but it meets with an immediate snag. War with England. In 1628 and 1629, English privateers, the Kirk brothers, sailed up the St. Lawrence and captured Quebec without a fight. They intercept supply ships, and with Quebec starving and undermanned, Champlain has no choice but to surrender in 1629. The English carry Champlain off to London as a prisoner. It looks like New France might be snuffed out, just as it was about to bloom. Yet, fortune, or history, intervened. The war between France and England ends, and in the peace treaty, Quebec is returned to France. The English had captured it after the treaty was technically signed, so it was what we call retroceded. Champlain, however, never wanted to give up, is back in Quebec by 1633, in his mid-60s now, but as determined as ever. He rebuilds the habitation, Habitation, and constructs a new fort atop the cliff, and welcomes a fresh wave of colonists. Slowly, a tiny French community formed, a few families, some women and children at last, a church, small farms on cleared land. Champlain can finally glimpse the outline of the society he envisioned, quote, the seat of a great people, quote, he might say. By 1635, about 150 Europeans live around Quebec and upstream at Trois-Rivières and Montreal, Montréal, outposts that he helped establish. The colony in New France is still a precarious foothold, reliant on indigenous goodwill and French supplies. Champlain's health is failing. Decades of toil have taken their toll. On Christmas Day, 1635, Samuel de Champlain dies in Quebec, likely around 68 years old. According to lore, legend, or myth, it is said that he passed away in sight of the great river he loved so much and the settlement he built with his own hands. At the time of his death, New France is still more concept than reality. It's a fragile colony of perhaps a few hundred souls and a land of tens of thousands of indigenous inhabitants. And yet, Champlain's legacy is immense. He had persisted where others gave up. He established a French and indigenous alliance that, while soaked in blood, would endure for generations. He mapped the contours of a continent and kept the dream of a French Canada alive for the darkest times. Champlain never saw a new France flourish in his lifetime, but the spark he lit would eventually catch fire. Just a few decades after his death, the colony's population would begin to grow by the hundreds and then the thousands. The key to that growth was solving the colony's most basic and human shortcoming, the lack of women. By the mid 17th century, New France still suffers from a skewed population. The fur trade attracted mostly men, soldiers, traders, priests, with very few women willing to brave the wilds. In 1663, there are fewer than a thousand French colonists in all of Canada, and men outnumber women by about six to one. The result is a stagnant birth rate and many lonely bachelors.

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If Champlain's colony is to become a real society, this must change. Enter Les Filles du Roi, the Daughters of the King. Beginning in 1663, King Louis XIV, King Louis XIV, the Sun King, sponsors an extraordinary program to ship marriageable young women to New France. Ah yes, the old marriageable young women in New France. Over the next decade, roughly 800 women, Most in their late teens or early 20s, often orphans or from poor families in Paris and Normandy, volunteered for this journey. Simply put, quote, there were not enough young women for the men currently in New France to marry and to produce children to populate the colony, quote. Louis XIV's ministers intend to fix that by providing incentives. Each fille du roi has her dowry paid by the crown, meaning whoever marries her gets money from the system or the government, including passage across the Atlantic, new clothes, and the promise of a choice of husband upon arrival. Picture one such woman, Louise, age 20, a butcher's daughter from Rouen. She's lost her mother and sees little future in France. In the spring of 1667, Louise and dozens of other women board a ship at Dieppe. The creaking timber vessel is not much larger than Champlain's in 1603. The same harrowing three-month Atlantic crossing awaits. Crammed in steerage, Louise endures seasickness, storms, and endless prayers. Twenty of the girls from Paris become so frustrated with poor conditions aboard the ship that during a stopover in port, they boldly file a legal protest with a notary, a lawyer, complaining that the promises of decent accommodations were not kept. This is a remarkable display of assertiveness. These women were not meek damsels, but tough and determined. When Louise finally arrives at Quebec City in early autumn, she gazes up at the wooden storehouses and churches of the now decades-old settlement. Perhaps it's smaller and rougher than she imagined, but she and her compatriots are welcomed as heroes. Curious townsfolk line the dogs. Young men jostle to catch a glimpse of their potential brides. The women are given lodging and a period of some weeks to meet suitors. New France speed dating anybody? Despite later tales painting the fille du roi as riffraff, they actually have the right to refuse any marriage proposal. In practice, most are married within a month, as that was the very reason they came. One can imagine Louise's nerves as she chooses a husband among the strange, rugged colonists in a strange game of the New France dating game. Perhaps she marries a farmer who shows kindness, or a shoemaker who already has a small house. With her dowry of 50 livres, 50 livres from the king, and a small trousseau, a chest of clothes, sewing needles, and a pair of new shoes, Louise begins her new life. The women who came to New France as Les Filles du Roi are extraordinarily brave. They leave everything familiar, family, France, the comforts of civilization, to venture into an unknown world across the sea. Why? Well, some seek adventure or the hope of a fresh start. Quote, How brave did a young woman have to be to set foot on such a journey? Was the prospect of a life in New France more appealing than her situation in France? Was she yearning for adventure? The answer lies in their actions. They went willingly, and in so doing, they became the founding mothers of French Canada. The impact of the Fille du Roi is immediate and profound. Marriages boom, and within a year, many of the new brides are pregnant. A baby boom begins that will, over two generations, multiply the population of New France dramatically. These women persevere through hardships. clearing land alongside their husbands, enduring brutal winters and even occasional Iroquois raids to raise large families. It's not uncommon for a Fidurois to bear 10 or more children, carving out a lineage in this new soil. Indeed, millions of Quebecers and French Canadians today can still trace ancestry to at least one of these king's daughters. Through them, Champlain's embryonic colony finally gains the critical mass of families needed to truly take root. New France transforms from a fur-trading outpost into a settler society. Today, we should not romanticize too much. Life for these women was harsh and often lonely, and not all marriages were happy. But in the broad view, les filles du roi turned the tide. By 1670, Quebec, Montréal, Trois-Rivières, and the farms in between become growing communities where children's laughter, in French, laughs out in the clear Canadian air. The gender imbalance that once threatened the colony's future is largely solved by the courage of these women. Their story, though a later chapter, is crucial to completing Champlain's mission of establishing the colony of New France. Samuel de Champlain could not have foreseen all that followed his lifetime. The arrival of the king's daughters, Les Filles du Roi, the expansion of New France, or the centuries that would lead to modern Canada. Yet, in a very real sense, Canada's origin story begins with him. His name rightly endures as the, quote, father of New France. It was Champlain's vision, tenacity, and belief in cooperation that set New France on a different path from other colonies. Where the Spanish conquered and enslaved, Champlain sought alliance and understanding, however imperfect, with indigenous nations. Where others saw only wilderness or a place of exile, Champlain imagined home, In his writings, he often referred to the indigenous as nosovage, quote, our savages, a term reflecting the bias of his era, yet the operative word is our. He saw them as part of the new society he was trying to build, not obstacles to eliminate. Champlain dreamed of a new France where French settlers and native peoples would live, work, and worship God together. This dream was only partially realized and rife with its own contradictions. but it was forward thinking for 1600s colonialism. Ultimately, Champlain's life was full of contrasts, probably like most of us. I guess that's why they say those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. He was a man of hope who experienced unspeakable horrors, and at the same time, a man of peace who found himself leading war parties. He was a pragmatic leader who could also be poetic in describing a sunrise over the St. Lawrence. Through it all, Champlain remained skeptical of extremes, grounded by his early witnessing of fanaticism in France and cruelty in the Americas. Champlain threaded a middle course as best he could, guided by an almost stubborn optimism that something great could be built in Canada. The gritty, cinematic imagery of Champlain's story is the very foundation of Canada's narrative. The boy on the windswept ramparts of Brouage. The scarred soldier wandering a battlefield of Breton's dead. The spy, marveling and retching at Spanish atrocities in the Caribbean. The explorer, braving Atlantic tempests on a tiny ship. The founder, sweating alongside axemen to erect Quebec's first wall. The warrior, firing his arcbus in a misty lakeside clearing. The traumatized ally, lowering his musket to grant mercy to a tortured soul. the aging governor, planting rose bushes outside his habitation, as if to prove that life can bloom even in this hard place. This is how nations are born, not in one dazzling moment, but through decades of toil, conflict, compromise, and vision. Champlain's legacy is ultimately one of endurance and forward thinking. He believed in the future of this land and at a time when others wrote it off. Recall the earlier scoffers who said nothing of value could come from, quote, settling the Northern Sea, quote. Champlain surely proved them wrong by laying the cornerstone of a new society. Without Champlain, there may have been no French-speaking Canada today. Without Quebec, Canada as we know it might not exist at all. Every Canadian, whether French, English, Indigenous, or otherwise, lives in the shadow of Champlain's choices. for better or for worse, for good or for bad. But when we say good or bad, we need to ensure that we are realizing that we are inferring judgment upon actions of the past in a context in which we did not live. It is fair to say Champlain paid a heavy price for his knowledge and his accomplishments. He lost so many comrades to scurvy and war. He lost years of labor and temporary defeats. He witnessed cruelty that no doubt haunted him. As one modern historian observed, explorers like Champlain paid a terrible price in violence and suffering for what they learned. We can scarcely appreciate our own country without knowing the cost the mapmakers paid. For Champlain, his life was his payment, and Canada was the reward. In the end, Champlain's story is hopeful and enlightening because it shows how courage and tolerance can light a candle in the darkest of times. Against the backdrop of war and wilderness, Champlain made a, quote, crazy idea a reality. It was the idea of friendship across cultures. That idea, however strained, took root at Quebec and survived. From one man's grit and daring sprang the lineage of millions. Here, with Champlain in the early 1600s, is the first chapter of the modern Canadian journey after Turtle Island. It's a chapter painted in bold, muscular strokes of survival and vision, yet also in subtle tones of faith and fraternity. It's a story as poetic as it is raw. Out of bloodshed and despair, Champlain nurtured a flicker of civilization in the wild, one that would one day grow into a nation, the one we now call Canada. The listeners of this tale can still feel the cold of that first winter night, hear the distant cry of the Iroquois prisoner, and sense the pounding heart of Champlain as he's bound with both fear and idealism. It's a lyrically powerful saga that reminds us that the roots of Canada were watered by sweat, tears, and blood, illuminated by dreams, and forged in unyielding hope. And it all began with Samuel de Champlain, interrupter of Turtle Island. and also steadfast navigator of both stormy seas and the even stormier human spirit. Today, we walked beside a man who dared to imagine more, who endured hunger, betrayal, and war, who dreamed of peace even as blood soaked the snow beneath his feet. Champlain was not perfect, yet the argument could probably be made that none of us is. He, like us all, was a person of many contradictions, a soldier who hated war, a colonizer who sought friendship, a Catholic who lived among the Wendat and Algonquin and learned to listen. We can change. Things don't have to be mutually exclusive, black and white. But the difference between us and Champlain is that he came at a time when most came to plunder and leave. Yet he stayed. He planted something. And whether we realize it or not, we are literally living in his wake, his temporal stream. And so now I leave you with a challenge. Where in your life are you passing through? And where are you planting roots? What seeds have you planted in the past that have got you here? Did you plan ahead? How did it happen? In 2025, we live in a time of... The hybrid reality, we're disconnected between our physical selves, our biological needs, and the call of the cloud ever present on our cell phones and other digital technology. We scroll instead of speak and consume instead of create and doubt instead of dream. But here at Canadian Grit, it means choosing discomfort for something bigger than yourself. That's growth. That's how we get stronger. That's how we live. So in closing, I'd like to ask you, not too seriously, but just for some mental reflection, what will your legacy be? What will we, as Canadians, be in 400 years? Will Canada exist? It's only been here for 400 years, in all of the thousands of years of human history. No, Champlain couldn't have imagined us or what came after him. But we have power today that he didn't. We have access to so much history and information and we can use it to sort of extrapolate or imagine forward. We can create a new Canada. We can reform and build a more welcoming and kind community. And that's what we're doing here at Canadian Grit. It means so much that you've come here. because this whole movement starts now. Thank you. Next time on Canadian Grit, we dive into the fall of a dream and the rise of a new order. Next time on episode four, make sure you bring your most handsome life vest as you join me. We're going to stay ashore here in New France back in the 1600s, even after the passing of the father of New France, Mr. Samuel de Champlain. Episode four is called The Wars for the Map, and we're going to get into some gritty, bloody, violent, and captivating history. It includes the Seven Years' War, the fall of Quebec, life in a longhouse, and the lingering ghosts of New France that continue to shape Canada and our collective identity today in 2025. Give yourself a break. We're all human. Look to our shared past. Just take a look where we went today. Together. What a time to be alive. And I'd argue 2025, in most ways honestly, is probably much better than being alive on the plains of Abraham on September 13th, 1759, as either leading generals of the French and British armies, laid dying. As he laid gasping, General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm uttered with his final breath, quote, But we will. I mean, in the past. And we'll ask, what does it mean when a dream dies? And what, like a phoenix, rises from its ashes? Have you ever rebuilt yourself after a terrible heartbreak or the death of a dream? Did something better ever come along? Perhaps something you never expected? Do you have a dream? Do you have a role model? Do we have a dream as we work together to reform this new Canada version 2.0? Maybe we should chew on all of this for a bit. probably better than what they had to eat in New France from the sounds of all the scurvy. So, until episode four, make sure you take care of yourself, that you floss and brush daily to take care of unwanted grit, and then make sure you like, share, and subscribe. Come find us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, We'll be right back. This is Jamie Jackson, your host of Canadian Grit, your vehicle to a more sustainable and kind Canada. Thank you for your time and attention today and your grit. I hope you've had fun. Stay grounded. Stay human. And as always, stay north of ordinary.