On the front cover ofBuilding the Canadian Nation, the history text my mother used in high school, is a collage: a lone Indian in a canoe is surrounded by images of a Viking longboat, a prairie farmer driving a wagon piled with wheat, a North West Mounted Police officer, a locomotive, and drawings of Second World War–era military hardware. Looking at it, one would assume that the history it recounted had entailed many things, and that not all were benign. As with all survey texts, its intention was to be as comprehensive as possible, and it had to...

The arrival of spring can be agonizingly slow in the lands around the Great Lakes. Nature teases the land and water with subtle tricks. Ice will break close to shore but a shift in the breeze or prevailing currents will quickly make waterways impassable again, as chunks of broken pack ice drift inward. A mild and sunny day that melts the snows of late March and early April can rapidly reverse its effects overnight when the temperature drops. Spring snowstorms are not infrequent and a damp chill seems to hang in the air well into May. The sky is sometimes...

Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s scheme was grand. The English West Country soldier of fortune, sailor, and geographer had become convinced in the 1560s that his sovereign, Queen Elizabeth, could join the front ranks alongside Europe’s most powerful monarchs, and that England itself could achieve vast commercial wealth and prestige by capitalizing on a northwest trading passage to Asia. The fact that he was only speculating on the existence of such route (to be found, he believed, north of Labrador) – and that he had no idea whether he could actually enter it or sail through it if he managed to get there...

The death watch had been underway for weeks, although for some observers its implications had been a source of concern for many years. In the lengthening days of March 1603, Queen Elizabeth, the “Virgin Queen,” “Gloriana,” and the last of the Tudors, lay dying. Her reign had marked England’s emergence as a Protestant and maritime power, but it had also featured vulnerabilities. One of the greatest stemmed from the queen’s long-held determination to maintain and maximize her own personal authority by avoiding marriage and risking a dilution of her powers to a consort. So, she had presented the public aspect...

In the summer of 1618, Sir Walter Raleigh hurried to finish a pamphlet, the contents of which he hoped would stave off his execution for treason or, at the very least, defend his reputation for posterity. Two years earlier, he had won release from prison courtesy of a begrudging James VI/I, to undertake a voyage of exploration in search of the fabled golden kingdom of El Dorado. Unsuccessful, his expedition had sparked conflict and bloodshed with the Spaniards in their sphere of influence in South America. The king of England feared war as a result, and the new Spanish ambassador,...

John Williams, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England, Dean of Westminster Cathedral, and Bishop of Lincoln, had been a great favourite of the late king. In the unfolding confessional struggle that would so divide early Stuart Britain, James saw Williams as a theological moderate in the Church of England’s growing rift between its Calvinist and Arminian wings.¹ He had loved to discuss theology with the Welshman, made him his court chaplain, and as the end approached had sent for Williams to administer communion on his deathbed on 24 March 1625. A witty and amiable man, Williams was a...

For a small and isolated outpost, home to fewer than seventy people in the autumn of 1627, the murders of two members of the community came as a great shock and stoked fears for the future. That October the bodies of two young herdsmen who had been attending Quebec’s small stable of cattle on Cap Tourmente were found floating in the St Lawrence. They had been stabbed, and their heads had been bashed in, probably by repeated club blows. Samuel de Champlain was in a quandary. His fellow Frenchmen at Quebec were certain that the guilty party or parties must...

On 3 September 1651, Oliver Cromwell’s English New Model Army defeated a Scottish force of fifteen thousand men at the Battle of Worcester. For most Scots, this was a dolorous event. It meant that their kingdom, which had been ardently defending its independence since the union of the crowns in 1603, was about to be absorbed into an expanded English republic. But one who must have welcomed the new order was an otherwise frustrated old man, who within a few weeks, obtained release from his prison near Linlithgow, at Blackness Castle. For James Stewart of Killeith, fourth lord Ochiltree, the freedom...

The syndicate that now styled itself the Company of Merchant Adventurers to Canada represented an obvious compromise. It also promised opportunities for everyone involved, including its proprietors, investors, prospective settlers, and King Charles I and his governments. Altogether, success for the Kirke brothers in taking Quebec and controlling shipping in the St Lawrence, if coupled with the planting of secure installations under Lord Ochitree on Cape Breton Island and the young Sir William Alexander in Acadia, could spell profits, new colonies, and military victories against the French. There were good reasons for co-operation. But a niggling mystery surrounds the extent...

The clergyman Richard Guthry makes the site chosen by Sir William Alexander junior for his settlement’s new home on the Bay of Fundy sound positively idyllic, blessed with enough wild game and seafood to delight the most discerning palates. He notes that it was: “fortifyed on both sides with hills; and fruitfull vallies adorned and enriched with trees of all sortes, as goodly oakes, high firres, tale beich, and birch of increadable bignes, plaine trees, Elme, the woods are full of laurall store of ewe, and great variety of fruit trees, chesnuts, pears, apples, cherries plumes, and all other fruits...

For most people, being given what amounts to a license to print money would seem like a financial panacea. The elder Sir William Alexander probably saw his own situation that way when he received what was in essence that right from King Charles I in the summer of 1631. The circumstances were most intriguing. For several reasons, Scotland’s monetary system was in a shambles by the time of Charles I’s reign. The first problem was that the kingdom did not mint a sufficient supply of its own coinage. The coins that were minted were generally of higher denominations than were...

Between 10 July 1631 and the announcement of the signing of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye on 29 March 1632, Sir William Alexander, now raised to the peerage as Viscount Stirling, received significant rewards and honours from Charles I, clearly intended to compensate him for his quiet abandonment of the Nova Scotia project.¹ We have noted, however, that Nova Scotia and the St Lawrence River region, particularly the main trading installation at Quebec, represented a separate commercial and diplomatic entity in the negotiations between the French and British representatives who hammered out the relevant treaty. Although Charles I had already given...

In the spring of 1632, Émery de Caën led an expedition to recover Quebec from Lewis Kirke and the agents of the Merchant Adventurers to Canada who had held the site since the summer of 1629. They were not pleased with what they found, particularly the fact that the English seemed to have destroyed many of the garrison’s dwelling places.¹ This scorched-earth action on the part of Kirke and his functionaries may have been less a concern for Émery than it was for two of the men who accompanied him, Charles Du Plessis-Bochart, agent of the Company of One Hundred...

In 1824 a former schoolmaster and son of a merchant from Birmingham named Alexander Humphreys obtained legal permission to change his surname to Alexander. Although it is not clear whether he was clinically delusional – or even criminally motivated – the renamed Alexander Humphreys Alexander claimed lineal descent on his mother’s side from the original patentee for Nova Scotia, coveted the title earl of Stirling and Dovan, and most of all, demanded rights to, or compensation for, lands in the by then British colony.¹ By 1830 he was openly using these titles, creating new Knights Baronet and brokering deals for property in...