France
Jacques Marquette
1637 - 1675
Place of Birth: Laon,France
Biography: Jacques Marquette was born in Laon, France, on June 1, 1637 and joined the Society of Jesus at age 17. After he worked and taught in France for several years, the Jesuits assigned him to New France in 1666 as a missionary to the indigenous peoples of the Americas. He showed great proficiency in learning the local languages, especially Huron. In 1668 Father Marquette was moved by his superiors to missions farther up the St. Lawrence River in the western Great Lakes region. He helped found missions at Sault Ste. Marie in present-day Michigan in 1668, St. Ignace in 1671, and at La Pointe, on Lake Superior near the present-day city of Ashland, Wisconsin. At La Pointe he encountered members of the Illinois tribes, who told him about the important trading route of the Mississippi River. They invited him to teach their people, whose settlements were mostly further south. Because of wars between the Hurons at La Pointe and the neighboring Lakota people, Father Marquette left the mission and went to the Straits of Mackinac; he informed his superiors about the rumored river and requested permission to explore it.
Legacy: Father Marquette is memorialized in the names of many towns, geographical locations, parks, a major university, and other institutions
Jacques Cousteau
1910 - 1997
Place of Birth: Saint-André-de-Cubzac, Gironde
Biography: Cousteau was born on 11 June 1910, in Saint-André-de-Cubzac, Gironde, France to Daniel and Élisabeth Cousteau. He had one brother, Pierre-Antoine. Cousteau completed his preparatory studies at the Collège Stanislas in Paris. In 1930, he entered the École Navale and graduated as a gunnery officer. After an automobile accident cut short his career in naval aviation, Cousteau indulged his interest in the sea.
In Toulon, where he was serving on the Condorcet, Cousteau carried out his first underwater experiments, thanks to his friend Philippe Tailliez who in 1936 lent him some Fernez underwater goggles, predecessors of modern swimming goggles.Cousteau also belonged to the information service of the French Navy, and was sent on missions to Shanghai and Japan (1935–1938) and in the USSR (1939).
On 12 July 1937 he married Simone Melchior, with whom he had two sons, Jean-Michel (born 1938) and Philippe (1940–1979). His sons took part in the adventures of the Calypso. In 1991, one year after his wife Simone's death from cancer, he married Francine Triplet. They already had a daughter Diane Cousteau (born 1980) and a son Pierre-Yves Cousteau (born 1982), born during Cousteau's marriage to his first wife.
Legacy: Cousteau's legacy includes more than 120 television documentaries, more than 50 books, and an environmental protection foundation with 300,000 members.
Jacques Cartier
1491 - 1557
Place of Birth: Saint-Malo
Biography: Jacques Cartier was born in 1491 in Saint-Malo, the port on the north-west coast of Brittany. Cartier, who was a respectable mariner, improved his social status in 1520 by marrying Mary Catherine des Granches, member of a leading family.His good name in Saint-Malo is recognized by its frequent appearance in baptismal registers as godfather or witness.
Legacy: Cartier was the first to document the name Canada to designate the territory on the shores of the St-Lawrence River.
Samuel de Champlain
1574 - 1635
Place of Birth: Hiers-Brouage
Biography: Born into a family of mariners, Champlain, while still a young man, began exploring North America in 1603 under the guidance of François Gravé Du Pont, his uncle.From 1604 to 1607 Champlain participated in the exploration and settlement of the first permanent European settlement north of Florida, Port Royal, Acadia (1605). Then, in 1608, he established the French settlement that is now Quebec City. Champlain was the first European to explore and describe the Great Lakes, and published maps of his journeys and accounts of what he learned from the natives and the French living among the Natives. He formed relationships with local Montagnais and Innu and later with others farther west (Ottawa River, Lake Nipissing, or Georgian Bay), with Algonquin and with Huron Wendat, and agreed to provide assistance in their wars against the Iroquois.
In 1620, Louis XIII of France ordered Champlain to cease exploration, return to Quebec, and devote himself to the administration of the country.In every way but formal title, Samuel de Champlain served as Governor of New France, a title that may have been formally unavailable to him owing to his non-noble status.He established trading companies that sent goods, primarily fur, to France, and oversaw the growth of New France in the St. Lawrence River valley until his death in 1635.
Champlain is memorialized as the "Father of New France" and "Father of Acadia", and many places, streets, and structures in northeastern North America bear his name, or have monuments established in his memory. The most notable of these is Lake Champlain, which straddles the border between northern New York and Vermont, extending slightly across the border into Canada. In 1609 he led an expedition up the Richelieu River and explored a long, narrow lake situated between the Green Mountains of present-day Vermont and the Adirondack Mountains of present-day New York; he named the lake after himself as the first European to map and describe it.
Legacy: Many sites and landmarks have been named to honour Champlain, who remains, to this day, a prominent historical figure in many parts of Acadia, Ontario, Quebec, New York, and Vermont.
René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle
1643 - 1687
Place of Birth: Rouen, France
Biography: Robert de La Salle was born on November 21, 1643, into a comfortably well-off family in Rouen, France, in the parish Saint-Herbland. When La Salle was younger he enjoyed science and nature. As a man, he studied with the Jesuit religious order and became a member after taking initial vows in 1660.At his request on March 27, 1667, after he was in Canada, he was released from the Society of Jesus after citing "moral weaknesses." Although he left the order, never took final vows in it, and later became hostile to it, historians sometimes described him incorrectly as a priest or a leader.
Legacy: La Salle's major legacy was establishing the network of forts from Fort Frontenac to outposts along the Great Lakes, Ohio, Illinois and Mississippi rivers that came to define French territorial, diplomatic and commercial policy for almost a century between his first expedition and the 1763 cession of New France to Great Britain.
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