NATURAL RESOURCES OF QUEBEC 
CHAPTER 1 
A Province Old in Story 
“HE story of the early years in the province of Quebec is rich in the 
romance of history. The record begins with the year 1534, when 
Jacques Cartier, starting from Brittany in his search for Cathay, 
passed through the straits of Belle Isle and sailed as far as Anticosti before 
his return. Next year he anchored opposite this island in a small bay, 
to which he gave the name St. Lawrence, which has since been extended 
to the gulf and river. Continuing his voyage past the island of Bacchus 
(now Orleans), he penetrated as far as the Indian settlement of Hochelaga 
(Montreal), returned to Stadacona (Quebec) for the winter, and on May 
3, 1536, before weighing anchor for France, planted there a cross bearing 
a shield with the lilies of France and a scroll claiming the land for Francis 
I, his king. 
EARLY FRENCH EXPLORERS 
Nothing permanent was accomplished for more than half a century 
until Samuel de Champlain, the resourceful mariner and soldier, founded 
Quebec on July 3, 1608, the birthday of the Canadian nation. As the 
first explorer to ascend the Ottawa river and to return from Georgian bay 
by the route of the Trent canal, as the discoverer of lake Champlain, as 
the first governor of New France, and as the devoted servant of Henry IV 
and Richelieu, who by honest perseverance opened Canada to fur-trader, 
agriculturist, and missionary, he has left a record that cannot perish. 
In the years between the death of Champlain in 1635 and the death 
of the great governor Frontenac at the close of the century, the chief 
events were the founding of the Mission at Montreal by Maisonneuve 
(1642) in defiance of the Iroquois; the grant of a charter to the Hudson's 
Bay Company by Charles II in 1670; the arrival of several detachments 
of the Carignan-Salieres regiment; the defeat of Sir William Phips in 
his futile attack on Quebec in 1690; and the impetus given to colonization