In Canadian historiography, Samuel de Champlain has been given many titles, none of them contradictory. For modern historians, the founder of Quebec City (1608) was a mariner, an explorer, a cartographer, a military leader, a diplomat as well as a savvy colonial administrator. While D.H. Fischer calls him a “humanist”, for Jesuit historian Charlevoix (I, 197) he was simply a “man of merit” and, above all, the “Father of New France”. Probably born in Brouages (Charente-Maritime, France) between 1567 and 1580, son of the naval captain Antoine Champlain and Marguerite Leroy, both commoners, Champlain grew up in a mixed religious milieu, where he received solid training in writing, drawing, and geometry. His family background …
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Citation: Côté, Sébastien. "Samuel de Champlain". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 October 2015 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1177, accessed 22 November 2024.]
