centres, provided out of funds supplied by the same public-spirited
donor, are now maintained by local and provincial public school
authorities. (E. H. G.)

HISTORY

Discovery.

About A.D. 1000 Leif Ericsson, a Norseman, led an expedition from
Greenland to the shores probably of what is now Canada, but the first
effective contact of Europeans with Canada was not until the end of the
15th century. John Cabot (q.v.), sailing from Bristol, reached the
shores of Canada in 1497. Soon after fishermen from Europe began to go
in considerable numbers to the Newfoundland banks, and in time to the
coasts of the mainland of America. In 1534 a French expedition under
Jacques Cartier, a seaman of St Malo, sent out by Francis I., entered
the Gulf of St Lawrence. In the following year Cartier sailed up the
river as far as the Lachine Rapids, to the spot where Montreal now
stands. During the next sixty years the fisheries and the fur trade
received some attention, but no colonization was undertaken.

French colony.

At the beginning of the 17th century we find the first great name in
Canadian history. Samuel de Champlain (q.v.), who had seen service under
Henry IV. of France, was employed in the interests of successive
fur-trading monopolies and sailed up the St Lawrence in 1603. In the
next year he was on the Bay of Fundy and had a share in founding the
first permanent French colony in North America--that of Port Royal, now
Annapolis, Nova Scotia. In 1608 he began the settlement which was named
Quebec. From 1608 to his death in 1635 Champlain worked unceasingly to
develop Canada as a colony, to promote the fur trade and to explore the
interior. He passed southward from the St Lawrence to the beautiful lake
which still bears his name and also westward, up the St Lawrence and the
Ottawa, in the dim hope of reaching the shores of China. He reached Lake
Huron and Lake Ontario, but not the great lakes stretching still farther
west.

The era was that of the Thirty Years' War (1618-48), and during that
great upheaval England was sometimes fighting France. Already, in 1613,
the English from Virginia had almost completely wiped out the French
settlement at Port Royal, and when in 1629 a small English fleet
appeared at Quebec, Champlain was forced to surrender. But in 1632
Canada was restored to France by the treaty of St Germain-en-Laye. Just
at this time was formed under the aegis of Cardinal Richelieu the
"Company of New F