Waters full of fish. Forests filled with wild animals you’ve never seen before. Indigenous (Native) peoples who welcome you – and some who don’t. It’s the late 1500s, and this is a new world. Your new world.
You’re a trader, and your village in France seems very far away. All you can see is a bright future ahead. You get rich selling beaver fur to European merchants. Everyone wants beaver hats. You catch lots of cod fish off the coast. You and other French traders work closely with the Indigenous Huron people in the fur trade. Together, you help build New France, which is land ruled by France.
It all started because European kings wanted to find a route to Asia called the Northwest Passage. No early explorer found it because it was frozen most of the year. What they found instead would become Canada.
