Cartier at Québec: Cartier-Brébeuf Park and Charlesbourg-Royal

Longhouse, Cartier Brébeuf Park

In the Québec City area, the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada (HSMBC) has recognized two sites of national historic significance associated with the voyages of Jacques Cartier. In 1923 it recognized Fort Charlesbourg-Royal at Cap-Rouge, where the first French settlement was built in 1541–42. In 1958 it recognized Cartier-Brébeuf Park, where Jacques Cartier and his companions spent the winter of 1535–36, and where the first Jesuit mission stood from 1625 to 1640.

The sites commemorate the first encounters between Europeans and Aboriginal peoples in Canada. At a time when the exploration of America was beginning, Jacques Cartier made three voyages to Canada between 1534 and 1542. It was during the second, in 1535–36, that he explored the St. Lawrence River, a “discovery” that led to the establishment of a French colony in Canada. Cartier’s winter stay, close to the village of Stadacona, illustrates the difficulties of adjustment as well as the tense relations between the two cultures. Donnacona (recognized by the HSMBC in 1981), chief of the Iroquois village of 500 inhabitants, was seized and carried off to France, giving rise to strong resentment. In 1541–42, when Cartier sought to establish a first settlement at Cap-Rouge, the hostility of the Iroquois made this untenable. A century later, the Jesuits chose the spot where Cartier had spent the winter of 1535–36 as the site for their first mission to spread Christianity in French America; the mission operated from 1625 to 1640.