Champlain's America: New France and New England

The year 2008 marks the four hundredth anniversary of the founding of Quebec by Samuel de Champlain, a colonist who is less well-known south of the Canadian border. He would have been confused, in fact, by the distinction between what is now Canada and what is now New England. He had mapped its coastline extensively, giving names such as “Beau Port” and Malebarre” to places now called by their English names of “Gloucester” and “Cape Cod.”

For Champlain, America was a lifelong obsession and his twenty-nine journeys across the Atlantic Ocean brought him from the Caribbean to the northern reaches of North America. More than just a colonist, he was an actor, map-maker, and writer. His genius for writing and promoting led to the establishment of a Francophone community in Quebec, still vibrant after four hundred years of existence.

France and England’s battle over dominion of the area delineated by Champlain extended for almost a century and a half in the lands known variously as New France and New England. Caught up in the imperial conflicts of their home countries, the colonists were deeply unsettled by the presence of the other population to their north or south. This exhibition documents the complicated relationship in the area from the moment of discovery to the British conquest of Quebec City.