Jacques Cartier's voyages of 1534, 1535, and 1541constitute the first record of European impressions of the St Lawrence region of northeastern North American and its peoples. The Voyages are rich in details about almost every aspect of the region's environment and the people who inhabited it. As Ramsay Cook points out in his introduction, Cartier was more than an explorer; he was also Canada's first ethnographer. His accounts provide a wealth of information about the native people of the region and their relations with each other. Indirectly, he also reveals much about himself and about sixteenth-century European attitudes and beliefs. These memoirs recount not only the French experience with the Iroquois, but alo the Iroquois' discovery of the French. In addition to Cartier's Voyages, a slightly amended version of H.P. Biggar's 1924 text, the volume includes a series of letters relating to Cartier and the Sieur de Roberval, who was in command of cartier on the last voyage. Many of these letters appear for the first time in English. Ramsay Cook's introduction, 'Donnacona Discovers Europe,' rereads the documents in the light of recent scholarship as well as from contemporary perspectives in order to understand better the viewpoints of Cartier and the native people with whom he came into contact.

Brief biography of the French explorer who was the first European to explore the Gulf of the St. Lawrence, the St. Lawrence River and the lands that bordered them.

Covers the discovery and exploration of North America by a variety of European explorers.

Historians have long engaged in passionate debate about collective memory and the building of national identities. This book focuses on one national hero – Jacques Cartier – to explore how notions about the past have been created and passed on through the generations and used to present particular ideas about the world in English- and French-speaking Canada. The cult of celebrity surrounding Cartier by the mid-nineteenth century, Gordon reveals, reflected a particular understanding of history, one which accompanied the arrival of modernity in North America. This new sensibility, in turn, shaped the political and cultural currents of nation building in Canada. Cartier may have been a point of contact between English and French Canadian nationalism, but the nature of that contact, as Gordon shows, had profound limitations. The Hero and the Historians is necessary reading for anyone interested in the underlying culture of national identity – and national unity – in Canada.

Describes the life and travels of French navigator Jacques Cartier who made voyages to what is known today as Canada in search of the northwest passage to China.