Waters teeming with 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. Your village in France feels a million miles away. All you can see is a bright future ahead. The beaver fur you sell to European merchants makes you rich. (Beaver hats are all the rage.) The cod you catch off the coast are plentiful. You and other French traders work closely with the Huron Indians. Together, you build a successful fur trade. And together, you’ll help build New France, which is a colony, or land ruled by a foreign country.
It’s amazing that it all started because Europeans wanted to find the Northwest Passage to Asia. No early explorer ever did find it. That’s because it was frozen most of the year. What they found instead would become the great nation of Canada.
