50 Fun Facts About Samuel De Champlain

Three Montagnais girls who joined Samuel de Champlain's household in 1627–28 were known by which trio of names?

Faith, Hope and Charity came to live with a man who had no children of his own. When the English took Quebec in 1629, two of the girls stayed behind with a settler family.

A toothy fish Samuel de Champlain described in 1609 is often retold as the first sighting of what?

A lake monster called Champ is the legend, with hundreds of reported sightings. The claim that Champlain saw it dates only from a 1970 magazine article; his journal describes a gar.

For a few weeks in 1998, US law added Lake Champlain, Samuel de Champlain's namesake, to which famous group?

The Great Lakes gained a sixth member through one line in a 1998 funding bill. The uproar was loud enough that the status was withdrawn eighteen days later.

Samuel de Champlain kept the Algonquin name Kébec for his 1608 settlement; what does the word mean?

Where the river narrows describes the spot exactly: the St. Lawrence squeezes past Cape Diamond there. Champlain built his first houses at the foot of that cliff.

A statue of Samuel de Champlain in Canada's capital famously holds which navigator's instrument upside down?

An astrolabe measured the height of the sun or stars to fix latitude. One dated 1603, dug up by a farm boy in 1867, was long said to be Champlain's own, though scholars now doubt it.

Which feasting club did Samuel de Champlain start at Port-Royal in 1606 to keep colonists healthy in winter?

Order of Good Cheer members took turns hunting and hosting a feast, wearing a chain of office for the day. Idleness was then blamed for the sickness that killed men in winter.

Quebec City, founded by Samuel de Champlain, is the only city north of Mexico that still has what?

Its fortified walls still ring the old town, which UNESCO made a World Heritage Site in 1985. The city's flag has a notched white border to stand for them.

Samuel de Champlain died in Quebec in 1635, about two months after a severe stroke, on which holiday?

Christmas Day 1635 ended his decades of work at Quebec. He left no direct heirs, and a cousin in Paris later had his will overturned.

Which disease killed nearly half of Samuel de Champlain's companions on Saint Croix Island in winter 1604–05?

Scurvy, a lack of vitamin C, was then known only as land-sickness. Champlain ordered an autopsy to look for its cause, and the survivors moved across the bay the next year.

Hélène Boullé was about 12 when she married Samuel de Champlain; what did she do later, back in Paris?

Entered a convent is the answer: she became an Ursuline nun, took the name Hélène de Saint-Augustin and founded a house of the order at Meaux.

The Don-de-Dieu, the ship that carried Samuel de Champlain to found Quebec in 1608, has a name meaning what?

Gift of God still sails on Quebec City's flag: the gold ship at its centre is the Don de Dieu, put there as a reminder of the founder.

With which firearm did Samuel de Champlain say he killed two Iroquois chiefs with a single shot in 1609?

An arquebus was an early matchlock long gun. The shot scattered his opponents that day, but they went on fighting the French and their allies for the rest of the century.

Samuel de Champlain bluffed English privateers into leaving Quebec in 1628 with only 50 pounds of what in store?

Gunpowder was almost gone, yet his defiant reply persuaded the attackers to withdraw. They captured the French supply fleet instead and starved the colony into surrender a year later.

After the English captured Quebec in 1629, on what grounds did Samuel de Champlain call the seizure unlawful?

The war had already ended: peace was signed in April 1629, three months before he surrendered. It still took until 1632 for a treaty to hand the colony back to France.

Which earlier French explorer's route up the St. Lawrence did Samuel de Champlain set out to retrace in 1603?

Jacques Cartier had explored the river some sixty years before. Champlain wanted to see every place he had described and then push further inland.

Which cardinal founded the Company of One Hundred Associates in 1627, with Samuel de Champlain among its investors?

Cardinal Richelieu, the dominant figure in French politics, gave the company control of the fur trade. Champlain appears as investor number 52 on its list.

Lake Champlain, which Samuel de Champlain reached in 1609, lies mostly between New York and which other US state?

Vermont has the eastern shore, and the lake drains nearly half the state. Burlington, the largest city on the water, sits on that side.

Like many explorers of his day, Samuel de Champlain hoped the rivers of New France would lead to which country?

China was the prize: a royal commission ordered him to explore toward it, and he kept looking for a passage west long after settling at Quebec.

Port-Royal, the settlement Samuel de Champlain helped build in 1605, stood in which present-day Canadian province?

Nova Scotia now has a full-size replica of the wooden compound on its original site, built from 1939 to 1941 using a set of plans found in France.

Which mystery about Samuel de Champlain has kept researchers searching old Quebec City since about 1850?

Where his tomb lies is unknown because the chapel that held his remains burned down in 1640. The best guess is somewhere near Notre-Dame de Québec Cathedral.

Which French king, in whose army Samuel de Champlain fought in Brittany, later rewarded him with a pension?

Henry IV received a secret illustrated report on his travels and paid for it with a yearly pension. Champlain then served as a geographer at the royal court.

Which river, now the Ontario–Quebec border, did Samuel de Champlain paddle up in 1613 in search of a northern sea?

Ottawa is the answer: a young Frenchman had sworn the river led to a sea, but an Algonquin chief exposed the story and Champlain turned back, calling the man an impudent liar.

Which lake did Samuel de Champlain reach by canoe in 1615, a body of water the French called the freshwater sea?

Huron is the one he reached by way of the French River, and the French knew it as La Mer Douce. He spent the following winter with the Wendat, who lived near its shore.

On the site of which future city did Samuel de Champlain name an island after his wife in 1611?

Montreal still has Saint Helen's Island, named for Hélène. More than three centuries later it was enlarged to host the Expo 67 world's fair.

Brouage, the French port town where Samuel de Champlain grew up, owed its wealth to trade in which commodity?

Salt made the town rich, and its black-coloured variety was often sold to the royal family. The harbour silted up later in the 17th century and left the town stranded.

No portrait of Samuel de Champlain was made in his lifetime except a tiny engraved figure of him in what scene?

A battle is where he appears, as a small figure in a print of the 1609 fight. Every other drawing and painting of him is an artist's guess.

Which Roman god starred in the first European play staged in Canada, at Port-Royal during Samuel de Champlain's stay?

Neptune arrives by boat with his attendants to welcome the colony's leader home from a voyage. The lawyer-poet Marc Lescarbot wrote the pageant, and a Halifax theatre is named after it.

The prehistoric Champlain Sea, named for Samuel de Champlain, left fossils of which sea creatures far inland?

Whales, including belugas and bowheads, swam over what is now dry land. The ocean flooded the St. Lawrence valley after the ice sheets retreated, then drained as the land rose again.

Which landmark hotel now stands on the Quebec City cape where Samuel de Champlain built Fort Saint-Louis in 1620?

Château Frontenac opened in 1893 on the cape where French governors had lived since 1620. It is often called the most photographed hotel in the world.

Why did Samuel de Champlain, New France's leader for decades, never hold the formal title of governor?

His rank was too low: such posts were kept for the high nobility. He was commissioned lieutenant general instead, though colonists still wrote of him as their governor.

Days after founding Quebec in 1608, Samuel de Champlain uncovered a plot led by locksmith Jean Duval to do what?

Assassinate him and hand the post to rival traders was the plan. Champlain lured the ringleaders aboard a boat with two bottles of wine, arrested them and had Duval hanged.

During which activity did Samuel de Champlain get lost in the woods for three days while wintering with the Wendat?

A deer hunt drew him away from his hosts. He lived on game and slept under trees until he met a band of First Nations people by chance.

Samuel de Champlain had to be carried from a failed 1615 attack on an Iroquois town after arrows hit him where?

His leg took two arrows, one of them in the knee, and for several days he rode on a Wendat warrior's back. His allies then insisted he spend the winter in their country.

Which English privateer led the fleet that starved out Quebec and forced Samuel de Champlain's surrender in 1629?

David Kirke sailed with his brothers under a commission from Charles I. The king later knighted him and gave him a charter for Newfoundland.

Which young Frenchman did Samuel de Champlain send to live among the Algonquin in 1610 to learn their language?

Étienne Brûlé became his interpreter and guide, then ranged far ahead of him: he is counted as the first European explorer to travel beyond the St. Lawrence into the interior.

How far south did Samuel de Champlain's voyages of 1605–06 reach before clashes with the Nauset turned him back?

Cape Cod was the limit. He named a harbour there Mallebar, the bad bar, and gave up the idea of a French colony on that coast; the Mayflower arrived in 1620.

Samuel de Champlain named which New Brunswick river in 1604 for the saint on whose feast day he reached it?

St. John was honoured because Champlain reached the river's mouth on the feast of John the Baptist. Its older name, Wolastoq, means beautiful river.

What name did Samuel de Champlain give the ditch-ringed cluster of wooden buildings he raised at Quebec in 1608?

The Habitation was three main buildings and a storehouse on the riverbank spot that is now Place Royale. It served the new colony as fort and living quarters at once.

At which fur-trading post at the mouth of the Saguenay did Samuel de Champlain first land in Canada in 1603?

Tadoussac was by then the most important fur-trading centre in North America. Champlain joined a great feast there that brought the French together with the Montagnais and their allies.

Which Franciscan order sent four friars with Samuel de Champlain in 1615 as Quebec's first missionaries?

Recollects were a French reform branch of the Franciscans, chosen partly because they were inexpensive to send. The Jesuits arrived later and in time displaced them.

Which Paris apothecary, brought to Quebec in Samuel de Champlain's day, is remembered as Canada's first European farmer?

Louis Hébert left his Paris shop in 1617 with his wife, Marie Rollet, and their three children. Theirs was the first family to settle at Champlain's outpost.

Which nobleman, Samuel de Champlain's patron, paid out of pocket for the three ships that founded Quebec?

Pierre Dugua de Mons equipped the fleet at his own expense and chose Champlain to lead it. He had headed the earlier colony at Port-Royal himself, under a royal fur monopoly.

What did Samuel de Champlain call his first book, an account of his 1603 voyage up the St. Lawrence?

Des Sauvages, meaning Concerning the Savages, was in print within months of his return. It records his meetings with the Montagnais and the customs he saw along the river.

From which Normandy port did Samuel de Champlain sail in April 1608 on the voyage that founded Quebec?

Honfleur saw him off more than once: his 1603 and 1604 voyages began from the same harbour, and several of his return crossings ended there.

Which St. Lawrence city grew from a trading post that Samuel de Champlain had built in 1634, a year before he died?

Trois-Rivières takes its name from the three channels at the mouth of the Saint-Maurice. Champlain had marked the spot as a good place to settle on his first voyage, three decades earlier.

Samuel de Champlain's Old Testament first name is one clue that his Catholic family may once have been what?

Protestant families favoured biblical names of that kind. A baptism entry found in 2012 in a La Rochelle temple register may be his, though scholars are not yet sure.

Around 1600 Samuel de Champlain spent two years touring the West Indies and Mexico with which country's fleet?

Spain had chartered his uncle's ship for the crossing. Champlain's illustrated report on what he saw went to the French king in secret and earned him a pension.

Samuel de Champlain's 1632 treatise, drawn from a lifetime at sea, set out the duties of a good what?

Mariner is the word in its title, and he knew the job: he crossed the Atlantic more than twenty times. The treatise covers leadership, seamanship and navigation.

Samuel de Champlain is remembered as the Father of New France and also as the father of which Atlantic colony?

Acadia was where he started: he spent three years charting its coast and helping to plant its first settlements before he ever turned to the St. Lawrence valley.

After a deadly first winter on Saint Croix Island, Samuel de Champlain's colony moved across which bay?

Bay of Fundy tides are the highest in the world. Its waters lay between the island camp and Port-Royal, a sheltered site Champlain had found while scouting the shoreline.