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"If a tank was coming, you had to get in position to be able to fire at it."

See below for Mr. Guérin's entire testimony.

Please be advised that Memory Project primary sources may deal with personal testimony that reflect the speaker’s recollections and interpretations of events. Individual testimony does not necessarily reflect the views of the Memory Project and Historica Canada.

Various movements arose in the 20th century to unite the nuns who could trace their origins to La Flèche: in 1953 the American and Canadian convents became one congregation, which the French congregations then joined in 1965. The generalate is in Montréal.

In the 17th century, religious silver was brought to the colonies by missionaries, or sent from patrons in France. The Huron of Lorette, Qué, have an important French reliquary presented to the mission in 1679 and a monstrance of 1664 that originally belonged to the Jesuits.

Emblems of Canada include the national coat of arms and flag. When John Cabot arrived on the shores of North America in 1497, he raised a cross and the royal banner of England. Since then, Canada’s emblems have evolved out of those traditionally used by France and Britain.

Fort Duquesne, located at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers at the site of present-day Pittsburgh, Penn, guarded the most important strategic location in the west at the time of the Seven Years' War.

An estimated 1700 students attended the Collège des Jésuites, more than half of them being students from the Petit Séminaire. These pupils were drawn much more from the Québec than from the Montréal region. Louis JOLLIET is one of the most famous alumni of the college.

Acadia’s history as a French-speaking colony stretches as far back as the early 17th century. The French settlers who colonized the land and coexisted alongside Indigenous peoples became called Acadians. Acadia was also the target of numerous wars between the French and the English. Ultimately, the colony fell under British rule. Many Acadians were subsequently deported away from Acadia. Over time, as a British colony and then as part of Canada, Acadians increasingly became a linguistic minority. Nonetheless, Acadians have strived to protect their language and identity throughout time.

Jesuit Relations (Relations des jésuites), the voluminous annual documents sent from the Canadian mission of the Society of Jesus to its Paris office, 1632-72, compiled by missionaries in the field, edited by their Québec superior, and printed in France by Sébastien Cramoisy.

Since prehistoric times, the inhabitants of what is now Canada used vegetation and animals for food, clothing and shelter. They fashioned implements and ornaments from MINERALS and, after the arrival of Europeans, used furs for trading.

The colonization of eastern Canada began with the French in the 17th century. For some years, these settlers depended for clothing on what they brought with them.

Wars often have many causes. Some are long-standing problems between nations, while others are dangerous sparks that inflame attitudes and push nations to a call to arms.

The fur trade began in the 1600s in what is now Canada. It continued for more than 250 years. Europeans traded with Indigenous people for beaver pelts. The demand for felt hats in Europe drove this business. The fur trade was one of the main reasons that Europeans explored and colonized Canada. It built relationships between Europeans and Indigenous peoples.

(This article is a plain-language summary of the fur trade. If you are interested in reading about this topic in more depth, please see our full-length entry, Fur Trade in Canada.)

In early Canada, the enslavement of African peoples was a legal instrument that helped fuel colonial economic enterprise. The buying, selling and enslavement of Black people was practiced by European traders and colonists in New France in the early 1600s, and lasted until it was abolished throughout British North America in 1834. During that two-century period, settlers in what would eventually become Canada were involved in the transatlantic slave trade. Canada is further linked to the institution of enslavement through its history of international trade. Products such as salted cod and timber were exchanged for slave-produced goods such as rum, molasses, tobacco and sugar from slaveholding colonies in the Caribbean.

This is the full-length entry about Black enslavement in Canada. For a plain language summary, please see Black Enslavement in Canada (Plain Language Summary).

(See also Olivier Le Jeune; Sir David Kirke; Chloe Cooley and the Act to Limit Slavery in Upper Canada; Underground Railroad; Fugitive Slave Act of 1850; Slavery Abolition Act, 1833; Slavery of Indigenous People in Canada.)

The Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815) were a series of wars between France and shifting alliances between other European powers.

Since the 1960s some craftsmen have moved away from traditional weaving into "art fabric," experimenting with traditional techniques but using a wide range of materials in the production of unique works.

Hôtel-Dieu is the name given to hospitals established by nursing orders of nuns. The Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal was founded by Jeanne Mance and funded by Madame de Bullion, the widow of one of Louis XIII's superintendents of finance.