Where we last left off, the nations of Stadacona and Hochelaga had successfully driven out an invasion of people from the Kingdom of France. Agona and his people would have wondered if that was the last they’d see of the French, or if the foreigners might return. As it turned out, that question didn’t matter either … Continue reading Nations of the Kaniatarowanenneh
This is a continuation of the previous post, Donnacona. If you haven’t read that yet, I suggest you start there. Agona As Cartier sailed away from Stadacona with his ten captives, he left behind 25 dead crew members in the land he’d come to call Canada. Five years later, as he sailed away from France to … Continue reading Agona
I. There was a man named Donnacona, the leader of the Stadaconan nation. Every summer he led a large delegation of men, women, and children on a fishing or hunting trip to build up their food supplies for the long winters of their country. This year (a year we call 1534, but that the Stadaconans … Continue reading Donnacona
When did people first arrive in the Americas, and where did they come from? When I started researching Canadian history for this blog I thought that the answers to those questions were well understood, but also that they didn’t really matter. I was wrong on both counts, and reminded of that fact by a recent … Continue reading The arrival of humans in the Americas
A year ago I made the public commitment to blog weekly about Canadian history. A year later, this is the 52nd post I’ve published. Here’s what I’ve learned, and what comes next. By the numbers, I’ve published more than 40,000 words on this blog this year, the length (though not the cohesion) of a small … Continue reading A year of blogging historically
This is my second-last post of my year of blogging weekly about Canadian history, and I didn’t plan well enough ahead to have a post related to Christmas. Instead, here is an interesting observation from Champlain’s Dream by David Hackett Fischer. Samuel de Champlain somewhat famously referred to the Indigenous peoples of the land now called … Continue reading Les sauvages
My great aunt Joy was born on September 9, 1926, and she died on January 1, 2017, the same day I started this blog. Having just experienced 2016, when so many beloved celebrities had suddenly and unexpectedly died, I remember thinking, while nursing a dull hangover in a Montreal hotel room, “Joy made it out alive.” … Continue reading When Joy was born
Last week I wrote about the country called Wendake and the peoples of the Wendat confederacy, some of whom had lived in the land they called Wendake for more than one thousand years when the Wendat confederacy was destroyed soon after the arrival of the French. In telling Wendake’s story I intentionally kept mentions of the … Continue reading Life in Wendake vs. life in France
“Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed. All great countries are destroyed. Why not yours? How much longer do you really think your own country will last? Forever?” – Old man in Catch 22 by Joseph Heller *** There was a country called Wendake. The people who gave Wendake its … Continue reading A country called Wendake
It is commonly said that the internet contains “the entirety of human knowledge.” Some variation of the phrase is often used as a joke, like this: Though the idea is also invoked much more seriously, like when Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales says he’s providing “free access to the sum of all human knowledge,” or when Google says … Continue reading The edge of knowledge
