COMMENTARY: Champlain’s Dream: How to celebrate the triumph of a colonizer?

Peter Black

peterblack@qctonline.com

For all that historians know about Samuel de Champlain – which is a considerable amount – none has been able to answer a basic question about the man: What did he look like?

The only verified real-life image of the founder of Quebec is in a scene he sketched himself for one of his voyage logs, depicting a  battle with the Iroquois in 1607 at Lake Champlain.

In the drawing, the man, confirmed to be Champlain by his contemporaries, is shown firing an arquebus at a flank of Iroquois fighters who are firing arrows back.

The image being less than an inch high, Champlain’s features are indistinct, but he is definitely sporting a beard, and, according to historian David Hackett Fischer, author of the magisterial and definitive biography Champlain’s Dream, he is the very picture of an officer of high standing.

Now, were there to be a decent and accurate portrait of Champlain, it should by rights accord him a Mona Lisa smile. There was no certainty the tiny but bustling colony he left behind when he died on Christmas Day, 1635, would endure. It is safe to say that never in his wildest dreams might he have imagined what La Nouvelle-France would become.

With la Fête Nationale in the air, it’s as good a time as any to reflect on Champlain’s geopolitical miracle.

What often gets lost in the endless political jousting over Quebec’s place in Canada is how stunningly remarkable it is that a place so stubbornly and proudly French-speaking has survived and thrived since Champlain planted the first tiny, delicate seed some 416 years ago.

At any one of several inflection points in the early years, the French presence in the upper right corner of North America could have been snuffed out with relative ease, given the inconsequential size of the population, the fragility of its settlements and the relative might of its neighbours.

Indeed, when Champlain returned to Quebec from France in 1633 – the 27th and last of his trans-Atlantic trips – he didn’t know what to expect. He had fled the colony four years earlier when the British naval guns-for-hire, the Kirke Brothers, captured it during one of those endless wars between England and France.

The British returned the North American territory to France in 1632 in exchange for the French king paying the dowry of English King Charles I’s wife.

Champlain found the English gone but Quebec in ruins. There was only one family of French settlers – the famously prolific Hébert-Rolland couple – still working the land. He set to work rebuilding the settlement.

Some 130 years later, the British again captured Quebec City in September 1759 (and Montreal a year later). As it turned out, the Brits, in their conniving cleverness, granted the Canadiens the right to keep their language, religion and culture under the Quebec Act of 1774, largely as a buffer against the rebellious American colonists.

Fast forward through various threats to French Canada’s existence, from the Durham Report to the Confederation debates to the crushing domination of Quebec’s economy and society by English-speaking business barons, to, let’s say, waves of non-French-speaking immigration.

Yet, here we are with a province – OK, nation – where nearly all the 8.5 million inhabitants speak French – old stock and newcomers alike. Face it, Champlain would be amazed.

Still, though, Champlain, for all his glory, was a colonizer. That’s what he did.

Champlain, the colonizer, is now in the sites of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, which announced earlier this year it is reviewing the inscriptions on dozens of monuments in honour of the Father of New France.

As laudable or laughable as this may sound, it does pose an existential question: When Quebec celebrates the triumph of French in North America, are they not celebrating at the same time the subjugation and near eradication of Indigenous people?

Champlain, apart from occasional battles with the Iroquois, was known for his respectful and friendly relations with the original inhabitants; indeed, he spoke Indigenous languages, and his wife adopted three Native kids.

Champlain had as little insight into the future of Indigenous people in North America as he did his little French colony.

His dream, safe to say, did not include the nightmarish woe that was eventually visited upon the original nations of North America, and surely he would never have wished for that.