The founding of Montreal: a story of coureurs des bois
It’s in Montreal royal mountain. As the Canadian landscape brands began to be given European names, some got rich on the pearls of the other, while pearl divers died from smallpox introduced by colonizers. Frauke Buchholz recalls this in her novel Frostmond. In view of the “Ships in the Vieux-Port de Montreal”, a sudden flashback focuses on the germination of the exploitation.
“In 1611 the first trading post was (built) at the foot of Mont Royal (Real). At that time they drove downstream in wooden canoes, fully laden with the skins of beavers, silver foxes, martens, lynxes and wolves. “
Frauke Buchholz, “Frostmond”, novel, Pendragon Verlag, 288 pages, 18, –
In the presence of the action, the corpse of fifteen-year-old Jeanette Maskisin floats unnoticed in the St. Lawrence river. At another hour, Chris Ballandines celebrates his last day at the beach with a joint. Chris studies history and social sciences at Mac Gill University, but would rather be an adventurer like Jacques Cartier, “who was the first white in 1535 …”
A demolition
Sebastian Cabot was an apprentice to his father, the Venetian, perhaps also Genoese navigator Giovanni Caboto aka John Cabot aka Zuan Caboto. Caboto had entered the English trade with Iceland around 1490. A Portuguese treasure was played into his hands, the nautical chart of João Vaz Corte-Real, the first Portuguese governor in the Azores. It is believed that the knight reached Newfoundland generally unnoticed before 1450. Some take him as the discoverer of the Land of Cod, a phantom island named after the stockfish, which takes shape in stories from the 15th and 16th centuries. Sober people locate the historical core of the saga on a North Atlantic island that today belongs to the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. For a while, all the islands in the Gulf of Lorenz were called “the land of the Cortereals” (João Vaz Corte-Real was followed by three sons at sea) and also Bacalhau-Eilande. French fishermen gave the attributions with Île Royale and Île du Cap-Breton from 1504 an assertive direction.
In 1497 Coboto landed on the coast of Newfoundland and adopted the tundric nature for Henry VII Prima Vista Land in possession. The English king already thought he was left behind by the Spanish and Portuguese.
The English vernacular decried Latin Catholicism as a Spanish plague. The English reviled their opponents as dogs of the Inquisition.
The company was reprimanded by Spain with reference to the papal world division of 1494 as an interference with foreign sovereign rights. But no one could decide to take on a special commitment, polar bears and Inuit were not tempting.
In 1514 Sebastian Cabot led an expedition to Hudson Bay. At that time a distinction was made between Canada, New Wales and Labrador. But everything together was soon called Cabotia.
The second and third waves of development washed some men from Saint-Malo across the Atlantic. One should think of Jacques Cartier, who almost prophetically described the Lawrence River as the great drainage of the Canadian lakes. Cartier could only guess at the dimensions. In the winter of 1535 he lost his team to scurvy, madness and wolves. He survived in popular custody and christened the scene of his woe Mont Royal. That became Montreal. You have to keep that clear to yourself. One trembles and hesitates who lacks all the prerequisites for survival as well as all teeth, he thrives in the role of victim, his co-sleeping skills are modest. What is there else to say. He calls the place of his little pile Mont Royal and we still say Montreal today, while the people who helped Cartier had no bright future.
More soon.
From the announcement
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For years, young women of indigenous origin have been disappearing without a trace along the Transcanada highway. These crimes do not seem to be a priority for the police. But when the 15-year-old Jeanette Maskisin was found dead in Montreal and the media reported it widely, investigators LeRoux and Garner were put on the case. Your first port of call is a Cree reservation in the far north of Quebec, where Jeanette is from. The police there met with rejection, because from the perspective of the First Nation families, the police were never interested in the missing women. The investigators are getting more and more distressed, because more victims are feared and the perpetrator is also a target – someone has sworn bloody revenge.
Frauke Buchholz was born in 1960 near Düsseldorf. She studied English and Romance languages and did her doctorate on contemporary indigenous literature. She loves traveling and foreign cultures and has spent some time on a Cree reservation in Canada. Today she lives in Aachen and writes novels and short stories that have appeared in numerous anthologies. Her story “Barfly” was awarded 1st prize in Group 48 in 2020.
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