page_title: Samuel de Champlain
section_title: Founding of Quebec
hierarchical_section_title: Samuel de Champlain / Founding of Quebec
caption_attribution_description: arrival of Samuel de Champlain on the future site of Quebec City, 1608
context_page_description: Samuel de Champlain was a French colonist, navigator, cartographer, draftsman, soldier, explorer, geographer, ethnologist, diplomat, and chronicler. He made between 21 and 29 trips across the Atlantic Ocean, and founded Quebec, and New France, on 3 July 1608. An important figure in Canadian history, Champlain created the first accurate coastal map during his explorations, and founded various colonial settlements.
  Born into a family of mariners, Champlain began exploring North America in 1603, under the guidance of his uncle, François Gravé Du Pont. After 1603, Champlain’s life and career consolidated into the path he would follow for the rest of his life. From 1604 to 1607, he participated in the exploration and settlement of the first permanent European settlement north of Florida, Port Royal, Acadia, as well as the first European settlement that would become Saint John, New Brunswick. In 1608, he established the French settlement that is now Quebec City. Champlain was the first European to describe the Great Lakes, and published maps of his journeys and accounts of what he learned from the natives and the French living among the Natives.
context_section_description: In the spring of 1608, Dugua wanted Champlain to start a new French colony and fur trading center on the shores of the St. Lawrence. Dugua equipped, at his own expense, a fleet of three ships with workers, that left the French port of Honfleur. The main ship, called the Don-de-Dieu (French for the Gift of God), was commanded by Champlain. Another ship, the Lévrier (the Hunt Dog), was commanded by his friend Du Pont. The small group of male settlers arrived at Tadoussac on the lower St. Lawrence in June. Because of the dangerous strength of the Saguenay River ending there, they left the ships and continued up the "Big River" in small boats bringing the men and the materials.
  On July 3, 1608, Champlain landed at the point of Quebec and set about fortifying the area by the erection of three main wooden buildings, each two stories tall, that he collectively called the Habitation, with a wooden stockade and a moat 12 feet (4 m) wide surrounding them. This was the very beginning of what is now Quebec City. Gardening, exploring, and fortifying this place became great passions of Champlain for the rest of his life.
  Upon foundation of Quebec, a conspiracy, started by a locksmith, had formed to kill Champlain, in order to deliver the fort to the Spaniards or the Basques. Champlain, learning of the plot from one of his trusted pilots, apprehended, questioned, and pardoned the conspirators.
  In the 1620s, the Habitation at Quebec was mainly a store for the Compagnie des Marchands (Traders Company), and Champlain lived in the wooden Fort Saint Louis newly built up the hill (south from the present-day Château Frontenac hotel), near the only two houses built by the two settler families (the ones of Louis Hébert and Guillaume Couillard, his son-in-law).
caption: Painting by George Agnew Reid, done for the third centennial (1908), showing the arrival of Samuel de Champlain on the site of Quebec City.[Note 12]
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