The New France: the French-Canadian Dream

The summer voyager to Canada, if he still travels by sea, follows an historic exploration route. He sails within sight of the bleak coasts of Newfoundland, penetrates the Strait of Belle Isle, and crosses the great Gulf of St. Lawrence where the shores recede into the invisibility of distance and then return to sight as his ship enters the wide estuary of the St. Lawrence river.

Many hours afterwards, when the river has narrowed to a mere mile in width, the dark rock of Quebec raises the grey stone silhouettes of its buildings on the northern bank, and some time next day the traveller disembarks at one of the quays of the bilingual metropolis of Montreal, the largest—and the most charming—city of modern Canada.

It was by the same route and to the same destination that the Breton captain Jacques Cartier came when he sailed in 1535 up the great river—“the road of Canada” as the Indians called it—between banks crowded with autumn-brilliant forests where now the aluminium-roofed churches glitter over the narrow French Canadian farms running down to the water’s edge.