Thomas Peace When I first learned about Louis Vincent Sawatanen, about a decade ago, I thought that this Wendat man from Lorette was exceptional. Indeed, in many ways he was. Sawatanen was competent, if not fluent, in at least five different languages (Wendat, Mohawk, French, English, and Abenaki). At the end of the eighteenth-century, when… Continue Reading
Latest in: French North America
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Daniel Laxer Historians tend to overlook the role of musical instruments in the Seven Years’ War. Few devote much attention to explaining how armies operated or battles played-out. Fred Anderson’s Crucible of War, for instance, does a terrific job explaining the origins and unfolding of events, but hardly assesses the experiences of soldiers on the… Continue Reading
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Stephanie Pettigrew In 1909, a scholar at Université Laval, M. J. E. Prince, conducted a public lecture in Québec to a captive audience on the subject of a recently published book on Acadia. The book, written by Edouard Richard, was reported as “cloué au pilori”—nailing to the pillory—both Charles Lawrence, the villainous British Governor of Nova Scotia… Continue Reading
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Robert Englebert Well before digital humanities was a hot commodity and seemingly a must for every grant application, I was cutting my teeth as a grad student and inadvertently became involved in digital history. Working for my PhD supervisor, Nicole St-Onge, at the University of Ottawa, I helped manage a team that digitized over 35,000… Continue Reading
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Philippe Halbert In 1726, the earthly possessions of Philippe de Rigaud, marquis de Vaudreuil and governor-general of New France, were inventoried at his Quebec residence. The late governor-general’s château Saint-Louis ranked among the most sumptuous households in the capital city, and the royal notary Jacques Barbel appraised an array of French and Flemish tapestries, Chinese… Continue Reading
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Philippe Halbert En 1726, les biens terrestres de Philippe de Rigaud, marquis de Vaudreuil et gouverneur général de la Nouvelle-France, ont été inventoriés à Québec. Sa résidence, le château Saint-Louis, figurait parmi les plus somptueuses de la capitale. Parcourant les chambres, antichambres et cabinets du château, le notaire royal Jacques Barbel a dénombré des tentures… Continue Reading
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Joseph Gagné By the end of the French regime in North America in 1763, New France stretched along the waterways leading from the Canadian Maritimes down the Saint-Lawrence River, and to the Great Lakes down the Mississippi valley to New Orleans. Covering such a large part of North America, it is not surprising then that… Continue Reading
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Daniel Simeone The theme of the 2015 annual meeting of the Institut d’histoire amérique française (Institute for the History of French North America), the principal French-language conference for historians of Quebec and French-speaking North America, was Urbanités. French and English share the dual interlinked definitions of the word urbanity. It refers to both the condition… Continue Reading
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Maxime Dagenais Last week (15-17 October 2015) was the 68th Congress of the Institut d’histoire de l’Amérique française. For the uninitiated, the Institut d’histoire de l’Amérique française is the largest organization of historians and specialists of French North America. Though centered on Québec, it attracts scholars from all over Canada and abroad, including the United… Continue Reading
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Mairi Cowan The early modernism of early Canadian history made a good showing last week in Williamsburg, Virginia. There, at the Emerging Histories of the Early Modern French Atlantic conference sponsored by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture, about a hundred scholars gathered to discuss the connections around and across the Atlantic… Continue Reading
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