Jacques Cartier

1491-1557
Early life and career of this distinguished navigator of St. Malo poorly known, possibly to 1532, he made several trips to Brazil and New Earth. With the blessing of bishop of Saint Malo and the support of the French king Francis I, he organized three expeditions (1534, 1535 and 1541) to the shores of Novaya Zemlya and the St. Lawrence River, during which discovered and explored part of Canada. He found no gold-fields, or anything else like that, but while traveling on his ship the "Great Ermine," it was an accurate description of the river and its estuary, and the same manners and customs of the Aboriginal. He established peaceful contact with the Indians and the first Europeans visited Goshelage on the spot where now stands the city of Montreal. Jacques Cartier discovered the "Road of St. Lawrence" - the starting point of French Canadian and one of the main ways of development of the American West.