Rise Of New France

It was past time to put in a new seasonal header for the blog. This one was taken, appropriately enough, at the Champlain Lookout in Gatineau Park last fall. 

Samuel de Champlain left a huge legacy behind. He mapped out new places in multiple expeditions, and his name is all over the Canadian map today.

But in the wake of contact with Europeans, an unexpected turn- indigenous peoples were exposed to diseases that the French had been largely immune to for generations. 

The Post-Contact Wars were a violent and turbulent time.

Ultimately they ended with the Great Peace of Montreal, a 1701 peace treaty that resolved much of the conflicts.

The era of New France had already begun.

But to people it was another matter. Young women in France, known as Les Filles du roi, sailed to the New World to settle and make families.