This account of the French era in the Canadian frontier is
one of the most significant eras throughout Canadian
History. The Canadian frontier deals with four major aspects
of European expansion, these are the military, commercial,
Settlement and the religious aspects. Yet they are all part of
One huge frontier and this one frontier embraced the entire
area, not merely the outer fringes of the territory in North
America controlled by France. Thus the Canadian frontier
was marked differently, in nature and in historical
development, from that of the other European powers the
English colonies in the southern parts of the continent.
These four major aspects will be discussed in this essay.
Commercially the French has had established good
relationships with the native inhabitants of the frontier. Geography dictated the pace and nature of European
expansion North America, and accounts for in no small
degree or measure for the differences in the frontier of the
two colonizing powers. When the North America is
approached from the eastern part in has four major entrance
ways into the interior, Hudson Bay, St. Lawrence River,
Mississippi River and the Hudson River. The French had a
strong hold on the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi rivers and the English held the Hudson Bay and the Hudson River. In the American Northeast, immigrants began to change their settlement patterns. As the following table attests, French Canadians headed increasingly towards Southern New England. As industrialization progressed in Southern New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, immigrants turned away from the farm labor, lumbering, brickworks, marble quarries and slate works of Northern New England and headed for the industrial centers of Southern New England. Northern New York State remained a popular destination for immigrants. New England and upstate New York became the preferred destinations for French Canadian immigrants, and...