Etchemins

Etchemins lies within the wider Quebec country of northeastern North America, a region whose name is associated with the narrowing of the Saint Lawrence and with Algonquin speech. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries this country formed part of the French colony of Canada, the leading area of French colonial development in New France. The Saint Lawrence and its tributaries linked settlements, missions, and trade routes across the northeastern interior, while the Roman Catholic Church took a central place in colonial society from the foundation of Quebec City in 1608.

French rule continued until the Seven Years’ War. Between 1534 and 1763 the colony of Canada grew within New France; after the war, Canada passed to Britain. The region was reorganized first as the Province of Quebec from 1763 to 1791, then as Lower Canada from 1791. These imperial changes did not erase the French-speaking and Catholic character of the colony. Instead, they set the political and religious framework within which later Quebec history unfolded, as the old St. Lawrence settlements and their hinterlands were incorporated into a British colonial order.