Québec (We Are All Quebecers In Spirit) Far above the little wooden ship towered the imposing mass of Cape Diamond. “Quel becx” exclaimed a Breton seaman, and thus, according to legend, Quebec received its name. The ship was Jacques Cartier’s, the date, September 14th, 1535. However, there is another story, less dramatic but more probable. At Quebec the Saint Lawrence narrows to a width of less than a mile. The Algonquin had a word for that ; the Micmacs, an Algonquin nation, still have and the word is “Kebec”, an area that is narrowed or constricted. In the early days of the Colony, the name was often spelled with a “K”. An ancient box in the Ursuline museum may still be seen, addressed to the first Mother Superior, Mere Marie de l’Incarnation, at “Kébec”. The first French voyage of discovery and exploration along these coasts that is known to history came in 1524. La Dauphine, commanded by Giovanni da Verrazzano for King François 1st of France, made the North American shores at Cape Fear, North Carolina, and sailed thence to latitude 500 N in Newfoundland. Verrazzano is the first European known to have put in at the sites of New York and Newport, Rhode Island. And he was responsible for the name Arcadia, happily recalling the ideal Arcadian landscape of ancient Greece, which has become L’Acadie or Acadia. Ninety-odd years later Champlain, who had read Hakluyt’s translation of Verrazzano’s unique narrative, in the dedication of one of his Voyages to Marie de Medici reminded the Queen Regent that the Florentine navigator was her compatriot, hoping thus to give her a personal interest in supporting his efforts to colonize Canada. But Marie did not “bite.” Champlain, however, profited by one of Verrazzano’s mistaken methods sailing so very far off shore that he missed all the big bays. Champlain always sailed close to shore in a small vessel, and he missed nothing between Newfoundland and Cape Cod, or in the Laurentian basin. For ten years after Verrazzano’s remarkable voyage, nothing was done by France to follow it up. The first real efforts to nail down French rights to this northern country were the voyages of Jacques Cartier in 1534-1541. This master mariner of Saint-Malo, the leading seaport of Brittany, made three voyages of exploration in the Gulf and River of St. Lawrence, and twice attempted to establish a French colony at or near the site of Quebec. His prime objective were to find that northwest passage to the Orient which Verrazzano had sought in vain and to turn up new sources of precious metals. On his first voyage he made landfall at Cape Bonavista, Newfoundland, sailed through the ice-cluttered Strait of Belle Isle and along the northern shore of the Gulf, which he reported to be “a land of Cain,” all rock and scarcely any vegetation. His account of this shore was so discouraging that Champlain never went near it. But Basque whale fishers found it to be a convenient base for their operations. Cartier discovered the Magdalen group, remarking that he would rather have one arpent of Brion Island than the whole of Newfoundland; Prince Edward Island; and the New Brunswick shore of the Gulf, exploring the Baie de Chaleur in the hope that it was the sought- for passage to the Indies. There he met a group of friendly Micmac Indians who offered peltry for trade, indicating that Europeans had already been there. At Gaspé harbor in Gaspé Bay he encountered a summer fishing party of Indians from around Quebec and they too were friendly. Cartier persuaded their chief, Donnaconna, to allow his two sons to be given a trip to France and trained as interpreters. Off Anticosti on August 1534, Cartier decided to turn back, as wind and tide were strong against him and he had insufficient provisions to last through a deep-freeze. François, 1 favorably impressed, ordered a second voyage to be organized. Cartier now commanded a big ship, La Grande Hermine, a small one named La Petite Hermine, and a little galion or pinnace named L’Emerillon. His objective, according to his commission, were “to explore beyond The Land. In 1620, Samuel de Champlain chose Upper Town as the site of the Saint-Louis Fort, Champlain, from where he lived during 1608 he could see a section of the flowing river; coming down from the West, which he had explored five years before. Quebec was a tiny outpost of white people in an immense and mysterious wilderness. Upper Town was mostly populated by British government officials and Catholic clergy members while French and English merchants and artisans lived in Lower Town After the British Conquest. Governor de Montmagny had begun the erection of the first “castle” in 1647. It was in an excellent position where it was situated. However it was not very well built. By 1690 it became dilapidated causing its new tenant some concern. Louis de Buade, Comte de Palluau et de Frontenac, was indeed a colorful person. He was a fearless soldier a statesman of unusual acumen particularly in his dealings with the Algonquin nation. He was a man of violent temper and a nice sense of humor, a religious man who fought bitterly with the Jesuit clergy and was not fond of the Bishop himself, who quarreled with the Intendant. He suffered lightly the stern of old nobleman who for a second time had been sent by his King to the Château Saint-Louis.. He had arrived in the autumn of 1689 the autumn of the Lachine massacre and had been welcomed by the people as the one man who could lead them back out of the chaos into which the Five Nations, yet it was not the Iroquois with which Frontenac had to deal on that day in October, 1690, in a scene which has always been remembered in Quebec. The years passed and the colony expanded, and in 1758 the Marquis de Vaudreuil the last governor of New France could look down from his Castle of Saint-Louis, which later became the Chateau Frontenac Hotel after several rebuilds from war and fire set on the brink of the cliff, and from this footing he could see the Saint Lawrence as the waters moved imperceptibly down to the sea. He could see the strong stone buildings of the Upper Town and the clustered roofs of the Lower town, as yet un-breached by English shells, and the far-off lines of white little farm-houses stretching out of sight along the banks of the river. Many of these homes and land was giving to the soldiers of the Regiment de Carignan if they stayed and married, Jean Beaugrand is one of those soldiers. Perhaps looking beyond his immediate horizons, the successor to the post of Champlain could see other things the realm of his royal master straddling a wilderness no longer unexplored, from Hudson’s Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, from Gaspé to the foot-hills of the Rockies. In the great basin below Cape Diamond lay a fleet of English ships. The Admiral, a former carpenter of Maine, had recently captured Port Royal (now Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia), and was awaiting in his flag-ship the return of his envoy with the Governor’s promise to surrender Quebec. The envoy was having a hard time while blind-folded, he was led through the Lower town, circuitously, over obstacles, and up a steep hill, jostled and laughed at by an unseen multitude, till he and his guides entered a building and the noise of the rabble ceased. Then the bandage was removed. He was in a room of considerable size. Facing him, in splendid uniforms, dered and plumed and decked out with ribbons of silver and gold, stood a group of the colony’s foremost officers. Here were the Sieur de Longueuil, down from his great seigneurie opposite Montreal; his brothers, de Maricourt, de Sainte-Hélène, de Bienville each a Le Moyne, each a famed warrior in his own right ; here was de Vairennes, “an officer of birth and ability”, who was to distinguish himself near Fort Chambly; de Villebon, ( my maternal ancestor jean Monty help build) was to be appointed Governor of Acadia, and other gentry of note drawn up behind Count Frontenac himself. The envoy was properly impressed and stood for a moment in silence; then he saluted the Governor and handed him the summons from Sir William Phips to surrender “your forts and castles, un demolished, and the King’s and other stores, un-embezzled, with a seasonable delivery of all captives together with a surrender of all your persons and estates.” An answer was to be forthcoming within the hour. The proposal was not very well received. Villebon offered the constructive suggestion that Phips was a pirate and that his man should be hanged. Then the Governor spoke. He did not recognize King William of England, nor did he suppose that anyone present was prepared to trust Sir William Phips, even if he, Frontenac, were to accept the terms of the surrender. He left no doubt that he would not accept them. The envoy, somewhat taken aback by this, asked for a written reply. “No,” said Frontenac, “I shall answer your general only by the mouths of my cannon.” This is the dramatic moment most often chosen for representation of the Great Governor. He is shown standing beside a cannon, one gauntleted hand pointing to the muzzle; a soldierly figure, proud and defiant. The incident has become a standard Historical Anecdote. In 1635, for the last time, Samuel de Champlain witnessed the superb Canadian Indian summer. The leaves turned scarlet, russet and gold, and fluttered to the ground and the river, stippling the dark waters with their brilliant colors. The first snow fell, and promptly melted. Savages offered him their autumnal delicacy of smoked eel, but he had no stomach for it. In October he suffered a paralytic stroke and never again rose from his bed. His last will and testament was dictated and on November signed, with Pére Lalernant as chief witness. Louisbourg fell in 1758. The remarkable siege and capture of the great Fortress was the curtain-raiser to a final act of high drama. The British, now firmly entrenched in the soil of Acadia. In 1759, that extraordinary “Year of Victories”, Wolfe and Saunders sailed up the Saint Lawrence to reduce Quebec. The colony was isolated, friendless, still held out. Then, on September 13th, after a stroke of incredible daring on the one hand and an exhibition of criminal negligence on the other, there came the Battle of the Plains and three days later the Union flag of England and Scotland flew over the Gibraltar of America but the fight for New France was not yet won. The brilliant Wolfe and the great Montcalm were gone a British force held battered Quebec, a French army laid siege to the city, and again the defenders marched out to the fight and again were driven back in defeat. There was irony in this, the last important battle under the Old Régime had been won by the French. The victory of Wolfe might well have been nullified by the bloodier victory of Levis, had it not been for a power which in that spring of 1760, as so often in the World’s history, showed itself to be the deciding factor in a struggle on the grand scale. It was the Royal Navy that settled the destiny of Canada. The coming of the British ships confirmed defeated Murray in the possession of Quebec; and victorious Levis withdrew to Montreal. The final curtain of the great drama was not to be long delayed. The exhausting demands of a war beyond her unsupported means, and the sight of crops un-gathered in the fields had worked. Excerpts Quebec 1759 by C. P. Stacey / Old Qubec by Alexander D. Angus / Samuel de Champlain by Samuel Eliot Morison / RB Private Library
Posted on: Sun, 20 Apr 2014 19:27:50 +0000