Champlain and the Founding of Quebec

Champlain explored the St Lawrence and Atlantic coast, mapped waterways and helped establish Quebec in 1608. He worked under changing commercial monopolies and royal patrons while repeatedly crossing the Atlantic to defend the colony’s interests.

His alliances with Innu, Algonquin and Wendat partners drew the French into existing Indigenous diplomacy and warfare, including conflict with Haudenosaunee nations. Survival depended on trade, interpreters, local knowledge and political trust.

Champlain’s Dream reconstructs these events as the life’s work of a soldier, navigator, cartographer and colonial leader who pursued a particular vision of French-Indigenous coexistence, while recognising the violence and inequalities within colonisation.