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• French Settlement on the South Shore
  Windsor is the oldest known site of continuous settlement in Ontario. The government of New France, anxious to increase its presence on the Detroit River, offered land for agricultural settlement on the south shore in 1749. That summer, families from the lower St Lawrence River relocated to lots which began about 6.5 km downstream from here. Along with civilians and discharged soldiers from Fort Pontchartrain (Detroit), they formed the community of La Petite Côte. Additional...

• Jesuit Mission to the Hurons, The
  In 1728, a mission to the Huron Indians was established near Fort Pontchartrain (Detroit) by Father Armand de la Richardie, S.J. The Mission was moved to Bois Blanc Island and the adjacent mainland in 1742. In 1747 it was destroyed by disaffected Hurons and a party of Iroquois, and the next year re-established in this vicinity. The Huron Mission became the Parish of the Assumption in 1767 and was entrusted with the spiritual care of...

• Founding of Belle River, The
  The settlement of this area began following the survey in 1793 of the lots fronting on the Belle River, among the early settlers were many French Canadians from the vicinity of the Detroit River. When the Great Western Railway was constructed, 1852-53, a station name Belle River was opened here. By 1855 a steam grist-mill and sawmill had been erected by Luc Ouellette and others, and a community known as Rochester soon developed. It was...

• Founding of Stoney Point, The
  French-speaking settlers from the Detroit-Sandwich area and Lower Canada (Quebec) were the first to locate in Tilbury West Township after it was surveyed in 1824. They established farms along Lake St. Clair and later near the Tecumseh Road and by 1851 formed a community called Stoney Point. After the arrival of the railway in 1854, the village developed into a market and industrial centre serving an agricultural and lumbering hinterland. In 1881, Stoney Point and...

• Founding of Tecumseh, The
  The intersecting of the Tecumseh Road, named for the eminent Indian leader, by the Great Western Railroad line in 1854 stimulated settlement in this largely French-Canadian area. A community gradually developed, and in 1873 it contained a sawmill, several stores and hotels, and a population of about 200. The village, first called Ryegate, and later Tecumseh, evolved from a local service center to a shipping point for area timber, cordwood, and especially grain. The establishment...

• Champlain in Ontario, 1615
  In April 1615, Samuel de Champlain (c. 1574-1635) embarked from Honfleur, upon his seventh voyage to New France. Upon arrival in Quebec, Champlain was informed of increasing tensions with the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) the traditional rival of his Anishinabe (Algonquian) and Wendat (Huron) allies. He travelled west to Huronia on a diplomatic and military expedition where he visited several villages including Cahiagué, a large and important Wendat settlement. With a mixed force of 400-500 First Nations...

• Fort Rouillé
  The last French post built in present-day southern Ontario, Fort Rouillé, more commonly known as Fort Toronto, was erected on this site in 1750-51. It was established by order of the Marquis de La Jonquière, Governor of New France, to help strengthen French control of the Great Lakes and was located here near an important portage to capture the trade of Indians travelling southeast toward the British fur- trading centre at Oswego. A small frontier...

• Laurentian University of Sudbury
  On petition of the University of Sudbury, the United Church of Canada and the Anglican Diocese of Algoma, supported by prominent citizens, this non-denominational, bilingual institution of higher learning was incorporated in 1960. Higher education in Northern Ontario had its origins in Sacred Heart College, founded in 1913 by the Society of Jesus, which as the University of Sudbury first exercised its degree-granting powers in 1957. Such powers, except in theology, were suspended in 1960...

• Sacred Heart College
  The Society of Jesus opened a classical college at this site in 1913. The next year, the province granted Sacred Heart College a charter giving it degree-granting powers. At first, the college was bilingual, but after 1916, it taught exclusively in French. Sacred Heart College became a centre for the education and formation of young Franco-Ontarian men. In 1957, it changed its name to the University of Sudbury, which became the Catholic component of Laurentian...

• Sainte-Anne des Pins
  An important centre of the Roman Catholic Church in northeastern Ontario, Sainte-Anne-des-Pins was established as a mission by Jesuits in 1883. A log church, now the presbytery, was built to serve as a school, as well as a place of worship for the congregation, and to provide a base for missionary work in Manitoulin Island and Sault Ste. Marie and settlements along the Canadian Pacific Railway. Active in community life, Sainte-Anne's played a prominent role...

• Jean Nicollet
  Nicollet arrived in New France from his native Normandy in 1618-19 to work in the fur trade. To help build alliances with the native peoples, Samuel de Champlain sent Nicollet to live in an Algonquin camp for two years. The young Frenchman then came to this vicinity and lived among the Nipissing for eight years. He learned the language and customs of his hosts, gained their trust, and acted as an interpreter in dealings with...

• Founding of Sturgeon Falls, The
  The development of Sturgeon Falls began in 1881 with the arrival of Canadian Pacific Railway construction teams and the opening of a post office. About a year earlier, the community's first permanent settler, James Holditch, had acquired land here on the Sturgeon River about two miles north-east of a former Hudson's Bay Company post, which he later purchased. The erection of sawmills and the rapid growth of the lumbering and pulp-paper industries stimulated the development...

• Jacques de Noyon 1668-1745
  The coureur de bois Jacques de Noyon was born at Trois-Rivières and raised at Boucherville, near Montreal. In 1688, he led a trading party north of Lake Superior and explored further west than any Frenchman of his time. He ascended the Kaministiquia River, crossed Dog Lake and, through several portages, reached Rainy Lake. Near Fort Frances, on Rainy River, Noyon built a post where he spent the winter. He traveled on to Lake of the...

• Louis Hémon 1880-1913
  The author of "Maria Chapdelaine", Hémon was born at Brest, France. He emigrated to Canada in 1911 and spent about eight months in the Lac St-Jean region of Quebec. While working on a farm near Péribonka, he wrote this well-known novel, a story of habitant pioneer life, which won widespread recognition. Acclaimed by literary critics in France, it was translated into English and many other languages. The French and English versions sold over a million...

• Founding of Killarney, The
  Etienne-Augustin de la Morandière, fur trader and founder of Killarney, settled here in 1820, when this locality, on the voyageurs' canoe route to the Northwest, was known as Shebahonaning ("narrow channel"). A substantial trading establishment, built by La Morandière on Drummond Island after the War of 1812, was destroyed by fire in 1817, and he moved here permanently after trading for a time at Flat Point, Bay of Islands. La Morandière raised crops and brought...

• Timiskaming Mission, The
  In 1836, a Catholic mission was established directly across the lake at Fort Timiskaming, a Hudson's Bay Company post where, by 1842, a chapel had been completed. The mission was moved to this site in 1836 and a presbytery was constructed by the Oblates who had commenced missionary work in the region in 1844. A second presbytery was built here in 1867.The Grey Sisters of Ottawa, who had arrived the previous year, then established the...

• École Guigues and Regulation 17, l'
  Erected as a school in 1904-05, this building became a centre for minority rights agitation in Ontario early in the twentieth century. In 1912, when the provincial government issued a directive restricting French-language education to the primary grades, heated controversy resulted. Opposition to this directive, commonly called Regulation 17, was widespread and particularly intense in Ottawa. Funds were withheld from the city's separate school board and in 1915, after it had closed the schools under...

• Samuel de Champlain
  Born at Brouage about 1570, this world-renowned cartographer and colonizer sailed from Honfleur in March 1603 on the first of more than twenty Atlantic crossings between France and Canada. Five years later, he established Quebec and thereby laid the foundation of the French empire in North America. An intrepid explorer, he journeyed into the interior of the continent (1613-1615), penetrating much of what is now Ontario. His account of these travels provided the first recorded...

• Honourable René-Amable Boucher 1735-1812, The
  Boucher was born at Fort Frontenac (Kingston) where his father, an officer with the French colonial regular troops, was stationed. René-Amable also chose a military career and served in the Seven Years War with the French defenders of Canada. During the American Revolution, he was captain of a volunteer company of French Canadian militia and fought with the British under General John Burgoyne. In Quebec, and later in Lower Canada, Boucher sat on the legislative...

• Madeleine de Roybon d'Allonne
  Of noble French birth, de Roybon was the first European woman to own land in what is now Ontario. She came to Fort Frontenac (Kingston), probably in 1679, where she acquired property from René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle, governor and seigneur of the fort. In 1681 she loaned him money to finance his explorations, and about this time he granted her a seigneury extending westward from Toneguignon (Collins Bay). On this land she built a...

• Champlain's Journey of 1613
  The Father of New France, Samuel de Champlain, made the first of two voyages into what is now Ontario in 1613. He travelled up the Ottawa River seeking the northern sea (Hudson Bay) which one of his five companions, Nicolas de Vignau, claimed to have seen. The expedition struck inland above Lac des Chats and followed a chain of small lakes towards present-day Cobden. Here, on June 7th, Champlain visited with the Algonkin chief Nibachis...

• Founding of L'Orignal, The
  The earliest settlers in the area, Joseph La Rocque-Brune and Raymond Duffaut, had located by 1791. Five years later, Nathaniel Treadwell, a land surveyor and speculator from Plattsburg, New York, acquired the seigneury of Pointe-à-l'Orignal, some 23,000 acres. Treadwell built a sawmill and a grist-mill and opened roads. By 1812, a small community was established here named L'Orignal after the moose found in the Pointe area. In 1816, it became the capital of the newly...

• French Presence in Cornwall, The
  A vital cultural force in eastern Ontario, the Franco-Ontarian community in Cornwall was established during the late 1870s when large-scale industrial expansion led to an influx of workers and tradesmen from Quebec. By 1881 French-speaking residents comprised the largest single cultural group in the town. Supported by a number of religious and scholastic institutions, including l'Église de la Nativité de la Bienheureuse Vierge Marie, the Francophone community grew steadily in the decades that followed. Increasingly...

• Champlain's War Party 1615
  In September, 1615, a small party of Frenchmen commanded by Samuel de Champlain, and some five hundred Huron Indians, passed down the Trent River on their way to attack the Iroquois who lived in what is now northern New York State. Joined by a band of Algonkians, they skirted the eastern end of Lake Ontario and journeyed southward to a palisaded Onondaga village near the present site of Syracuse, N.Y. Champlain was wounded, the attack...

• Franco-Ontarian Flag, The
  The Franco-Ontarian Flag was first raised at the University of Sudbury on September 25, 1975, at a time when Sudbury was experiencing unprecedented growth in Franco-Ontarian arts and culture. Conceived by Gaétan Gervais, historian at Laurentian University, and student Michel Dupuis, the first flag was made by Jacline England, a student and staff member at the university. Refusing to take sole credit for the flag, its creators hoped that the Franco-Ontarian community would claim it...

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