50 Fun Facts About Jacques Cartier

In which Breton port was Jacques Cartier born in 1491?

Saint-Malo was his home port on all three voyages; no authentic portrait of him is known, and the face familiar today was painted from imagination nearly three centuries after his death.

Which French king commissioned Cartier's voyages?

Francis I refused to accept that the pope had shared out the New World between Spain and Portugal, and Cartier's voyages were his way of staking a French claim.

The bishop who recommended Cartier to the king was also abbot of which famous French abbey?

Mont-Saint-Michel's abbot, Jean Le Veneur, vouched for Cartier to the king in 1532, arguing that a pilot who had already sailed to Brazil and Newfoundland could lead ships to new lands.

What was Cartier hoping to find when he set sail in April 1534?

A western passage to the East Indies was the dream, though the royal order that paid for the voyage spoke more bluntly of finding lands said to be full of gold.

Cartier called the barren north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence 'the land God gave to' which biblical figure?

Cain, the exiled murderer of Genesis: Cartier grumbled that along the whole coast he had not seen one cartload of good earth, only stones and crags fit for wild beasts.

Which now-extinct bird did Cartier's crews kill by the boatload on rocky islands in 1534?

Great auk: the fat, flightless seabirds could not escape, and Cartier's men filled two boats with them; later sailors kept up the slaughter until the last known pair was killed in 1844.

Which people most likely traded furs with Cartier at Chaleur Bay in July 1534?

Mi'kmaq paddlers held up furs on sticks to show they wanted to barter; the swap that followed is often counted as the first recorded trade between the French and the peoples of Canada.

What does the name Cartier gave Chaleur Bay mean?

Bay of warmth, or Baie des Chaleurs: Cartier explored it in early July 1534, and the name was fair, since the bay really is warmer than the rest of the gulf around it.

Where did Cartier raise a thirty-foot cross on 24 July 1534 to claim the land for France?

Gaspé Bay: the cross carried a shield of fleurs-de-lis and the words 'Long Live the King of France', and a stone cross stands in the town today to mark where France's claim began.

How did the local chief react when Cartier raised a cross claiming the land for France?

He paddled out to protest, pointing at the land to show it was his; Cartier soothed him with gifts and the story that the cross was only a landmark for ships.

As his crew lay dying in 1536, what did Cartier fix to a tree for them to pray before?

An image of the Virgin was set against a tree a bowshot from the fort, and every man who could still walk went to it in procession; Cartier vowed a pilgrimage if he lived to see France again.

After what did Cartier name a small bay Saint-Laurent in August 1535?

That day's feast was St Lawrence's: Cartier named the bay on 10 August, and mapmakers later stretched the little bay's name over the whole gulf and the great river beyond.

Which Iroquoian village did Cartier reach in 1535 on the site of today's Quebec City?

Stadacona's chief tried gifts and warnings to stop Cartier sailing further upriver, because he wanted to keep the French trade for his own people instead of sharing it with the larger town of Hochelaga.

What did Cartier do when the people of Hochelaga brought him their sick to be healed?

Read the Gospel of John aloud: though no priest, he recited its opening lines while touching each of the sick, then read out the Passion, to a crowd that had no interpreter to tell them what it meant.

Which mountain did Cartier climb and name during his visit to Hochelaga in 1535?

Mount Royal: townspeople guided him to the summit to show him the country, and Montreal is generally thought to take its name from his 'mont Royal'.

The rapids that stopped Cartier near Hochelaga later took the name Lachine, said to mock which explorer's quest?

Robert de La Salle held land beside the rapids and set off in 1669 to find a route to China; the mocking nickname 'la Chine' is said to have stuck to his estate, and the rapids later took it too.

Where did Cartier's fleet lie frozen from mid-November 1535 to mid-April 1536?

The mouth of the St. Charles River, below the heights of Quebec, held the ships from November to April; the crew built a fort beside them, and snow lay four feet deep on the banks.

What disease ravaged Cartier's men in the winter of 1535–36?

Scurvy struck the Iroquoians first and then the French; by mid-February barely ten of Cartier's 110 men were well enough to nurse the rest, and 25 died before a cure was found.

What cured Cartier's men of the winter sickness?

A drink from the bark of the annedda tree, an evergreen, worked within days; the crew stripped a whole tree in about a week, and Cartier called the cure a miracle.

Who revealed the cure that saved Cartier's dying crew in early 1536?

One of the chief's sons, Domagaya, had been sick himself days earlier; seeing him well again, Cartier asked how, pretending the cure was for a servant so the Iroquoians would not learn how weak the French were.

Whom did Cartier kidnap in May 1536 to tell the king about a land of gold?

Chief Donnacona told the French court of a land rich in gold and rubies and was kept at the king's expense, but he never saw home again: he died in France around 1539.

What was the name of the mythical rich land Cartier sought on his later voyages?

Kingdom of Saguenay: a captive chief filled it with gold, rubies and white men dressed in wool; no such land existed, but his tales helped win royal backing for another voyage.

What did Cartier promise the Iroquoians as he sailed off with their captured chief in 1536?

His return within a year, laden with royal gifts, was the promise that calmed the crowd; it was never kept, and of the ten Iroquoians taken to France only one young girl was still alive five years later.

Why did Cartier sail for Canada in May 1541 without Roberval, the expedition's commander?

His artillery had not arrived, and the king wanted ships at sea, so Roberval sent Cartier ahead; the commander did not catch up for a year, by which time Cartier was already heading home.

Where did the king let Cartier find some of the settlers for his 1541 colony?

In French prisons: volunteers for a Canadian winter were scarce, so the king authorised the taking of convicts, some fifty of them for Cartier's own ships.

What did Cartier name the fortified settlement he built at Cap-Rouge in 1541?

Charlesbourg-Royal had two forts, one by the river and one on the cliff above; Cartier's men sowed cabbages, turnips and lettuce, and the seedlings were up within a week.

What did the 'diamonds' and 'gold' Cartier shipped home turn out to be?

Quartz crystals and iron pyrites, or fool's gold, were all the barrels held, and the letdown gave French a proverb: 'as false as Canadian diamonds'.

How did the Iroquoians near his base try to scare Cartier out of sailing upriver in 1535?

Men dressed as devils, wrapped in dog skins with blackened faces and long horns, drifted past the ships in a canoe as a warning from the gods; the show had no effect, and Cartier sailed for Hochelaga anyway.

How did Cartier part from Roberval off Newfoundland in June 1542?

He slipped away under cover of darkness, defying Roberval's order to turn back to the colony; it was his last voyage, and he was never trusted with a long expedition again.

By the fullest account, Roberval, Cartier's commander, marooned his young relative Marguerite de La Rocque in 1542 for what?

Taking a lover aboard is the offence in André Thevet's fuller account; the Queen of Navarre's tale has the man put ashore and Marguerite joining him. In both she outlives him and gets home to France.

Why did five years pass between Cartier's second voyage and his third?

France was at war with Charles V: with Spanish armies on French soil the king had nothing to spare for Canada, and only after a truce in 1538 did plans for a third voyage revive.

In what language did Cartier serve as an interpreter in his later years at home?

Portuguese: Cartier is thought to have sailed to Brazil as a young man, and in retirement he was called on several times to interpret for Portuguese speakers.

What did kanata, the Iroquoian word thought to lie behind Canada's name, mean?

Village, or settlement, was all the word meant: Cartier's two young guides used it to point the way to their home, and he seems to have taken it for the whole region; about a dozen years later maps were printing 'Canada'.

In 1541, what did Cartier say had become of the chief's fellow captives, nearly all dead in France?

Living as lords, married and unwilling to come home, was Cartier's story; the new chief took it calmly, and the French guessed why: the old chief's death had left him ruler of the country.

The only surviving account of Cartier's third voyage is a fragment in which language?

English: the French original is lost, so the story survives only in a translation Richard Hakluyt printed in London in 1600, and it breaks off before the winter began.

Which find, announced in 2006, helped pinpoint Cartier's lost colony at Cap-Rouge?

An Italian plate fragment: the painted Faenza ware was too fine for anyone but a nobleman, pointing to the colony's aristocratic commander; charred timbers from the mid-1500s lay close by.

Which ship was Cartier's flagship on his second voyage in 1535?

Grande Hermine served him twice: the king made Cartier a present of the ship, and she crossed the Atlantic again in 1541 as one of the five vessels of his last voyage.

Why did Cartier leave one of his three ships behind in spring 1536?

Too few sailors were left alive: the winter's sickness had killed 25 of his 110 men, so Cartier abandoned one ship and sailed home with two.

Montreal's Harbour Bridge was renamed for Cartier to mark what?

The 400th anniversary of his first voyage, made in 1534, prompted the change, and the spot fits: the bridge stands close to where Cartier is thought to have come ashore in 1535 on his way to Hochelaga.

Cartier first named the Île d'Orléans after which Roman god, for something he saw growing wild there?

Bacchus, god of wine: wild grapevines hung so thickly along the shore that Cartier called it the Isle of Bacchus; it was later renamed in honour of a royal duke.

Cartier's crew caught and ate which animal in 1534, by his account as big as a cow and white as a swan?

Polar bear: the sailors met it swimming far out at sea, drawn by an island of nesting birds, and ran it down in their boats; Cartier judged the meat as good as a two-year-old calf.

Which Italian explorer did the French crown send to the North American coast in 1524, a decade before Cartier?

Giovanni da Verrazzano sailed into New York Bay on that voyage, which is why the great bridge across the harbour mouth now carries his name.

Who finally founded a permanent settlement at Quebec in 1608, long after Cartier?

Samuel de Champlain chose the spot because the fur trade could be controlled from there; furs, not the gold Cartier had hoped for, became the business of the colony that lasted.

What had become of the Iroquoians Cartier met when the French returned in 1608?

They had vanished from the valley: the villages Cartier described were gone, and whether war with neighbouring nations, European diseases or failed harvests emptied them is still argued over.

Which Canadian band references Cartier in the 1992 song 'Looking for a Place to Happen'?

The Tragically Hip put the song on their 1992 album Fully Completely; its narrator greets Cartier like a host taking a guest's coat, a wry way into the story of Europeans taking over Indigenous land.

What crop did Cartier find growing in broad fields around Hochelaga in 1535?

Corn: Cartier likened the unfamiliar plant to the millet of Brazil and noted that the townspeople lived on it as the French did on wheat.

Which property of Jacques Cartier gave its name to the Limoilou district of Quebec City?

His manor house in Brittany, Limoëlou, was where he retired to farm after his voyages; the stone house still stands and is now a museum devoted to him.

What did Cartier meet in 1534 that showed Europeans already knew the gulf's north shore?

A fishing ship from La Rochelle had lost its way looking for a harbour, and Cartier's men rowed over to set it right; cod fishermen had been working that coast before any explorer charted it.

Through which strait did Cartier enter the Gulf of St. Lawrence on his first voyage in 1534?

Strait of Belle Isle, between Newfoundland and Labrador, was his way in; he sailed past the wider southern entrance without recognising it and found that shortcut only on his way home in 1536.

Why did Cartier leave two French boys with an Iroquoian chief upriver in 1541?

To learn the local language: after years of carrying Iroquoians to France to turn them into interpreters, Cartier tried the reverse and left two boys to be taught by the people of the river.