Saturday, October 4, 2014

Early Fall Varia

In an op-ed for Le Devoir, Michel Morin took up the challenge posed by Christian Néron's crazy denial of the Treaty of Paris, to which I alluded in an earlier post.  Morin, a law prof at Université de Montréal, demonstrates how this treaty was perfectly in accordance with international law.  That settles that, then.

On September 14, a solemn mass was held at the Cathedral-Basilica of Notre-Dame de Québec to commemorate its 350th anniversary.  Pope Francis had New France on the mind, naming an envoy to preside over the mass and issuing a statement about the significance of the event, urging this envoy to "sweetly exhort the priests and faithful present there to follow Christ with perseverance and to venerate His Mother piously, as was the custom in these rather large regions."  Sweet, sweet exhortations.

In early September, CBC News - Nova Scotia published a story on Troilus de Mesgouez's failed attempt at settling Sable Island in 1598.  Another ill-fated, short-lived sixteenth-century settlement is the subject of an ongoing controversy.  Its precise location has never been clearly identified. Archaeologists have long thought that René Goulaine de Laudonnière's Fort Caroline of 1564-1565 was located on the banks of the St. Johns River in Jacksonville, Florida -- there's a "Fort Caroline National Memorial" there.  Maybe it wasn't. The issue was stirred anew back in February when someone made a presentation during a conference at Florida State University claiming that the colony was actually far to the north, in Georgia.  This and other theories were debated by two groups of scholars at the University of North Florida a few weeks ago (see here, and here).  Fight, fight, fight!

What else?  The Ganondagan site, which interprets Seneca history near Rochester, NY, held a reenactment of Cavelier de La Salle's visit in 1669.  Down au Pays des Illinois, there is a project afoot to expand the Bolduc House Museum in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, into an "expanded and rebranded tourist destination", a complex to be called "New France ... The Other Colonial America."  Neato.  In fair Belleville, Ontario, there is meanwhile a plan for a monument to commemorate to the 400th anniversay of Champlain's visit. 

That's all for now.

PS: dear readers, thank you for your patience while we fiddle around with our look.  It was time to get rid of the old Blogger template background.  But damn it, Jim, Charlevoix is an historian, not a damn graphic designer or web developer.

P.-F.-X.

4 comments:

  1. I do hope you get a white background behind the text... hard to read with the map. Trust me, though, I know how you feel about blogger: I've fiddled around a lot with my own blog, and still not happy about it.

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  2. Enjoying the new format, PFX. No complaints about the styling, though I did like the earthy browns of the previous incarnation.

    Pleasant to hear some in the US embracing that New France heritage.

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