Samuel de Champlain

Sébastien Côté (Carleton University)

Ed. by Emir Delic, Université Sainte-Anne
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.1.4: Canadian Writing and Culture: Francophone .
Vol. editors: Claire-Marie Brisson (Harvard University), Emir Delic (Université Sainte-Anne), Eftihia Mihelakis (Brandon University), Glen Nichols (Mount Allison University), Wendy Roy (University of Saskatchewan), Denis Salter (McGill University), Karis Shearer (University of British Columbia)

Dates

Born 1567
Died 1635
Activity 1603-1635

Places

Born in France
Active in Canada

Activities

Primary

Explorer
Writer / Author

Other

Colonist
Military commander

Resources

In Canadian historiography, Samuel de Champlain has been given many titles, none of them contradictory. For modern historians, the founder of Quebec City (1608) was a mariner, an explorer, a cartographer, a military leader, a diplomat as well as a savvy colonial administrator. While D.H. Fischer calls him a “humanist”, for Jesuit historian Charlevoix (I, 197) he was simply a “man of merit” and, above all, the “Father of New France”. Probably born in Brouages (Charente-Maritime, France) between 1567 and 1580, son of the naval captain Antoine Champlain and Marguerite Leroy, both commoners, Champlain grew up in a mixed religious milieu, where he received solid training in writing, drawing, and geometry. His family background and network also helped him to start his multifaceted career at an early age. After a few intriguing initiatory journeys, including...

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1927 words

Citation: Côté, Sébastien. "Samuel de Champlain". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 October 2015 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1177, accessed 09 June 2026.]