Samuel de Champlain
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50 free Samuel De Champlain trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Samuel de Champlain crossed the Atlantic more than twenty times, drew the first reliable maps of Canada's eastern shores, and planted a tiny trading post that grew into Quebec City. He was a soldier, a writer, something of a spy and a stubborn optimist, and the stories that cling to him are stranger than the schoolbook version. These fun facts about Samuel de Champlain come as quiz questions, each with its answer and a short explanation. They cover his boyhood on the French coast, the early voyages, the hard first winters, his alliances with Indigenous nations, the year the English took his colony, and the places and legends that carry his name today. A few are about his marriage, his books and the puzzles historians are still trying to solve. The quiz suits students working on an explorers project, teachers who want a ready-made classroom round, and anyone curious about how New France began. The opening questions are the friendliest; the later ones reward people who know their early Canadian history.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Three Montagnais girls who joined Samuel de Champlain's household in 1627–28 were known by which trio of names?
Faith, Hope and Charity
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.
Q 02A toothy fish Samuel de Champlain described in 1609 is often retold as the first sighting of what?
A lake monster
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.
Q 03For a few weeks in 1998, US law added Lake Champlain, Samuel de Champlain's namesake, to which famous group?
The Great Lakes
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 The uproar was loud enough that the status was withdrawn eighteen days later.
Q 04Samuel de Champlain kept the Algonquin name Kébec for his 1608 settlement; what does the word mean?
Where the river narrows
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.
Q 05A statue of Samuel de Champlain in Canada's capital famously holds which navigator's instrument upside down?
An astrolabe
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.
Q 06Which feasting club did Samuel de Champlain start at Port-Royal in 1606 to keep colonists healthy in winter?
Order of Good Cheer
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.
Q 07Quebec City, founded by Samuel de Champlain, is the only city north of Mexico that still has what?
Its fortified walls
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.
Q 08Samuel de Champlain died in Quebec in 1635, about two months after a severe stroke, on which holiday?
Christmas Day
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.
Q 09Which disease killed nearly half of Samuel de Champlain's companions on Saint Croix Island in winter 1604–05?
Scurvy
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.
Q 10Hélène Boullé was about 12 when she married Samuel de Champlain; what did she do later, back in Paris?
Entered a convent
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.
Q 11The Don-de-Dieu, the ship that carried Samuel de Champlain to found Quebec in 1608, has a name meaning what?
Gift of God
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.
Q 12With which firearm did Samuel de Champlain say he killed two Iroquois chiefs with a single shot in 1609?
An arquebus
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.
Q 13Samuel de Champlain bluffed English privateers into leaving Quebec in 1628 with only 50 pounds of what in store?
Gunpowder
Q 21Which French king, in whose army Samuel de Champlain fought in Brittany, later rewarded him with a pension?
Henry IV
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.
Q 22Which river, now the Ontario–Quebec border, did Samuel de Champlain paddle up in 1613 in search of a northern sea?
Ottawa
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.
Q 23Which lake did Samuel de Champlain reach by canoe in 1615, a body of water the French called the freshwater sea?
Huron
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.
Q 14After the English captured Quebec in 1629, on what grounds did Samuel de Champlain call the seizure unlawful?
The war had already ended
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.
Q 15Which earlier French explorer's route up the St. Lawrence did Samuel de Champlain set out to retrace in 1603?
Jacques Cartier
Jacques Cartier had explored the river some sixty years before. Champlain wanted to see every place he had described and then push further inland.
Q 16Which cardinal founded the Company of One Hundred Associates in 1627, with Samuel de Champlain among its investors?
Richelieu
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.
Q 17Lake Champlain, which Samuel de Champlain reached in 1609, lies mostly between New York and which other US state?
Vermont
Vermont has the eastern shore, and the lake drains nearly half the state. Burlington, the largest city on the water, sits on that side.
Q 18Like many explorers of his day, Samuel de Champlain hoped the rivers of New France would lead to which country?
China
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.
Q 19Port-Royal, the settlement Samuel de Champlain helped build in 1605, stood in which present-day Canadian province?
Nova Scotia
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.
Q 20Which mystery about Samuel de Champlain has kept researchers searching old Quebec City since about 1850?
Where his tomb lies
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.
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.
Q 24On the site of which future city did Samuel de Champlain name an island after his wife in 1611?
Montreal
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.
Q 25Brouage, the French port town where Samuel de Champlain grew up, owed its wealth to trade in which commodity?
Salt
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.
Q 26No portrait of Samuel de Champlain was made in his lifetime except a tiny engraved figure of him in what scene?
A battle
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.
Q 27Which Roman god starred in the first European play staged in Canada, at Port-Royal during Samuel de Champlain's stay?
Neptune
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.
Q 28The prehistoric Champlain Sea, named for Samuel de Champlain, left fossils of which sea creatures far inland?
Whales
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.
Q 29Which landmark hotel now stands on the Quebec City cape where Samuel de Champlain built Fort Saint-Louis in 1620?
Château Frontenac
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.
Q 30Why did Samuel de Champlain, New France's leader for decades, never hold the formal title of governor?
His rank was too low
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.