Louis Hebert, a native of
Paris, and Guillaume Couillard, of St. Malo. Emigration soon extended to
other parts of the provinces, as the result of the discrimination of the
Relations of the Jesuits, which had been distributed in Paris and
elsewhere during the years 1632 and 1633. Several pious and charitable
persons began to take an interest in the missions of New France, and
forwarded both money and goods to help them.

Some nuns offered to go to Canada to look after the sick and to instruct
the young girls, and in the year 1633 a few families arrived in Quebec
with Champlain, who had defrayed their expenses.

In the year 1634 an association was formed in France for the purpose of
promoting colonization, and a group of about forty persons, recruited in
different parts of the province of Perche, were sent to Canada, with
Robert Giffard at their head. Giffard, it will be remembered, had
visited Quebec in the year 1627 as surgeon of the vessels sent out by
the company, but he had no intention of settling in the country. After
having built a log hut on the Beauport shore, he devoted his leisure to
hunting and fishing, game and fish being plentiful at that time, and
returned to France during the same year. He was appointed surgeon to
Roquemont's fleet during the following year, and as the vessels were
captured by the English, he, with the others on board, was compelled to
return to his mother country. This misfortune did not discourage the
former solitary inhabitant of Beauport, and he resolved to revisit the
country, but this time with a view of settling and of farming.

Giffard had suffered many losses, and as a compensation for his services
and misfortune, he obtained a tract of land from the Company of New
France, one league in length and a league and a half in breadth,
situated between the rivers Montmorency and Beauport, bounded in front
by the river St. Lawrence, and in the rear by the Laurentian Mountains.
He was also granted as a special favour, a tract of land of two acres in
extent, situated near the fort, for the purpose of building a residence,
surrounded with grounds. These concessions, which seem large at first
sight, were, however, not new to the colony. Louis Hebert had been
granted the fief of the Sault au Matelot, and the fief Lepinay, while
the Jesuits had received the fief of Notre Dame des Anges almost free of
conditions.

Under these favourable conditions Giffard induced two citizens of
Mortagne,