SETTLEMENT OF THE COLONY

To the great joy of Mgr. de Laval the colony was about to develop suddenly, thanks to the establishment in the fertile plains of New France of the time-expired soldiers of the regiment of Carignan.  The importance of the peopling of his diocese had always been capital in the eyes of the bishop, and we have seen him at work obtaining from the court new consignments of colonists.  Accordingly, in the year 1663, three hundred persons had embarked at La Rochelle for Canada.  Unfortunately, the majority of these passengers were quite young people, clerks or students, in quest of adventure, who had never worked with their hands.  The consequences of this deplorable emigration were disastrous; more than sixty of these poor children died during the voyage.  The king was startled at such negligence, and the three hundred colonists who embarked the following year, in small detachments, arrived in excellent condition.  Moreover, they had made the voyage without expense, but had in return hired to work for three years with the farmers, for an annual wage which was to be fixed by the authorities.  “It will seem to you perhaps strange,” wrote M. de Villeray, to the minister Colbert, “to see that we make workmen coming to us from France undergo a sort of apprenticeship, by distribution among the inhabitants; yet there is nothing more necessary, first, because the men brought to us are not accustomed to the tilling of the soil; secondly, a man who is not accustomed to work, unless he is urged, has difficulty in adapting himself to it; thirdly, the tasks of this country are very different from those of France, and experience shows us that a man who has wintered three years in the country, and who then hires out at service, receives double the wages of one just arriving from the Old Country.  These are reasons of our own which possibly would not be admitted in France by those who do not understand them.”

The Sovereign Council recommended, moreover, that there should be sent only men from the north of France, “because,” it asserted, “the Normans, Percherons, Picards, and people from the neighbourhood of Paris are docile, laborious, industrious, and have much more religion.  Now, it is important in the establishment of a country to sow good seed.”  While we accept in the proper spirit this eulogy of our ancestors, who came mostly from these provinces, how inevitably it suggests a comparison with the spirit of scepticism and irreverence which now infects, transitorily, let us hope, these regions of Northern France.

Never before had the harbour of Quebec seen so much animation as in the year 1665.  The solicitor-general, Bourdon, had set foot on the banks of the St. Lawrence in early spring; he escorted a number of girls chosen by order of the queen.  Towards the middle of August two ships arrived bearing four companies of the regiment of Carignan, and the following month three other vessels brought, together with eight other companies, Governor de Courcelles and Commissioner Talon.  Finally, on October 2nd, one hundred and thirty robust colonists and eighty-two maidens, carefully chosen, came to settle in the colony.