How the French and English shaped Canada: The rise and fall of New France

« How the French and English shaped Canada: The rise and fall of New France Sencanada magazine, October 16, 2018 The fleur-de-lis and the Tudor rose, the salamander and the lion: symbols of English and French rule are everywhere in Parliament Hill’s Centre Block. Portraits of the French monarchs who governed New France from the 16th century to the 18th century hang in the Salon de la Francophonie.

Nearby, in the Senate foyer, are the British monarchs who succeeded them. It’s a celebration of Canada’s colourful and sometimes turbulent history of French and English coexistence. A bronze portrait of King Henri IV hangs in the Salon de la Francophonie.

He rebuilt a French economy battered by 36 years of religious civil war and personally financed several of explorer Samuel de Champlain’s expeditions. Samuel de Champlain explored Canada’s East Coast, Great Lakes and St.

Lawrence River, including its tributaries, between 1603 and his death in 1635.

He established the first permanent colonies in Canada and opened up France’s fur trade with local Indigenous trappers. . A fleur-de-lis forms part of an arch in the Senate foyer and a Tudor rose appears in a nearby arch. England planted its flag in 1497 when John Cabot, an Italian sailing on behalf of King Henry VII, reached Newfoundland and Labrador on the second of three voyages.

Cabot’s profile is carved in a stone frieze below the stained-glass ceiling of the Senate foyer.

Facing him is French explorer Jacques Cartier; it was the French, ultimately, who established the first permanent settlements in the new land. Cartier explored the St.

Lawrence River as far as the Lachine Rapids, where Montreal now stands.

He reported back to his sponsor, King François I, that the territory was vast, teaming with fish and wildlife and that the Indigenous inhabitants were eager to trade. It was King Henri IV, whose portrait hangs near François I’s in the Salon de la Francophonie, who seized this commercial opportunity.

He enlisted Samuel de Champlain, a man often referred to as the “Father of New France”, to open up trade in the New World.

Champlain, whose bronze bust stands nearby, led dozens of expeditions in the 1600s, establishing permanent settlements at Port Royal on the Bay of Fundy and at Quebec City. King Louis XIV made populating the territory a priority and, by the 1700s, it seemed like New France was about to bloom.

However, an awkward alliance with Austria, Russia and Spain dragged France into the Seven Years War in 1756. Known in North America as the French and Indian War, it was a sprawling conflict that ended up benefiting Great Britain at everyone else’s expense. Two centuries of French rule began to unravel in the 1750s.

King Louis XV is the last of nine Ancien Régime kings whose portraits hang in the Salon de la Francophonie.

These French monarchs governed New France from the 1500s to the 1700s. King George III, whose portrait hangs around the corner in the Senate foyer, is the first of nine British monarchs who succeeded them. French and English heraldic symbols, including the fleur-de-lis, the Tudor rose and the Tudor Crown, embellish a clock in front of the Senate Chamber’s public gallery. A Tudor rose, a traditional emblem of England, is carved in the back of the Senate Speaker’s chair France, heavily committed to fighting in Europe, stretched what few resources it had to defend its scattered colonial outposts.

Britain’s increasingly powerful navy harassed it on all fronts.

The Fortress of Louisbourg.... »