The Best Canadian Founding History eBooks of All Time

In this sweeping, enthralling biography, acclaimed historian David Hackett Fischer brings to life the remarkable Samuel de Champlain -- soldier, spy, master mariner, explorer, cartographer, artist, and Father of New France. Born on France's Atlantic coast, Champlain grew to manhood in a country riven by religious warfare. The historical record is unclear on whether Champlain was baptized Protestant or Catholic, but he fought in France's religious wars for the man who would become Henri IV, one of France's greatest kings, and like Henri, he was religiously tolerant in an age of murderous sectarianism.

Champlain was also a brilliant navigator. He went to sea as a boy and over time acquired the skills that allowed him to make twenty-seven Atlantic crossings without losing a ship. But we remember Champlain mainly as a great explorer. On foot and by ship and canoe, he traveled through what are now six Canadian provinces and five American states. Over more than thirty years he founded, colonized, and administered French settlements in North America. Sailing frequently between France and Canada, he maneuvered through court intrigue in Paris and negotiated among more than a dozen Indian nations in North America to establish New France. Champlain had early support from Henri IV and later Louis XIII, but the Queen Regent Marie de Medici and Cardinal Richelieu opposed his efforts. Despite much resistance and many defeats, Champlain, by his astonishing dedication and stamina, finally established France's New World colony. He tried constantly to maintain peace among Indian nations that were sometimes at war with one another, but when he had to, he took up arms and forcefully imposed a new balance of power, proving himself a formidable strategist and warrior. Throughout his three decades in North America, Champlain remained committed to a remarkable vision, a Grand Design for France's colony. He encouraged intermarriage among the French colonists and the natives, and he insisted on tolerance for Protestants. He was a visionary leader, especially when compared to his English and Spanish contemporaries -- a man who dreamed of humanity and peace in a world of cruelty and violence. This superb biography, the first in decades, is as dramatic and exciting as the life it portrays. Deeply researched, it is illustrated throughout with many contemporary images and maps, including several drawn by Champlain himself.

This is the first book in a two-book series giving the histories of early French-Canadian families. The second book, giving later generations is, Early French-Canadian Families Volume 2. The history is presented by detailing events in the lives of the early settlers, their children, and their grandchildren. Cross references in each book and between books are used to show the intermarriages of the families.

Canada is in many ways a country of limits, a paradox for a place that enjoys virtually unlimited space. Most of that space is uninhabited, and much of it is uninhabitable. It is a country with a huge North but with most of its population in the South, hugging the American border. Canada's history, eminent historian Robert Bothwell argues, is more than simply regional or national. In some respects Canada makes most sense when viewed from the outside in. The world has always seen Canada as a terrain for experiment and a land of opportunity.

The colonies and regions and disparate populations that became Canada derived from and were connected to a larger world. At first Canada's survival and, later, its prosperity depended on links with the world outside—the technologies that drove steamships and trains across oceans and continents; the armies that battled for North America; the furs, wheat, and gold that bought Canada a place in the world's trading system. Canada is unusual in other ways. Its inhabitants had to compromise deeply held beliefs about religion and nationality in order to live together. Compromise came only with difficulty, and the process of working out a tolerable system of government and politics has repeatedly produced painful confrontations between French and English, East and West, natives and non-natives. An uneasy and difficult country, Canada has nevertheless defied the odds: it remains, in the twenty-first century, a haven of peace and a beacon of prosperity. Erudite yet accessible and marked by narrative flair, The Penguin History of Canada paints an expansive portrait of a dynamic and complex country.