Fort Frontenac

6.

Sir Joliet, whom Monsieur Talon advised me, on my arrival from France, to dispatch for the discovery of the South Sea, has returned three months ago, and discovered some very fine country, and a navigation so easy through the beautiful rivers he has found, that a person can go from Lake Ontario and Fort Frontenac in a bark to the Gulf of Mexico, there being only one carrying place, half a league in length, where Lake Ontario communicates with Lake Erie.

He has been within ten days of the Gulf of Mexico.

I send you by my secretary the map he has made of it.

His enthusiasm is shown by the opening sentence.

I have obtained from God the favor of being enabled to visit the nations on the Mississippi River, and find myself in the happy necessity of exposing my life for the salvation of all these tribes, especially the Illinois.

Joliet followed the St. Lawrence to Fort Frontenac at the entrance of Lake Ontario, and with the exception of the portage at the Falls of Niagara, skirted in his canoe the shores of the Great Lakes until he reached the Straits of Mackinac, on the north side of which, at Point St. Ignace, he found the enthusiastic Marquette devotedly laboring for the spiritual welfare of the Hurons and Ottawans there gathered.

The contemplated line of travel was that of Jean Nicolet, an interpreter who had spent many years with the Indian tribes, who was sent in 1638 to bring about a peace between the Hurons and Winnebagos who lived near Green Bay.

So, Bob, in your book, you point out that historically there was a significant indigenous presence on the point.

And then you mentioned that the French arrived in the early 1670s, and they were really the first to establish a fortification, which they named Fort Frontenac.

And then later in the 18th century, they also engaged in some early shipbuilding.

There's then, in terms of the history of the Point, a bit of a hiatus until 1788 when the governor of the province of Quebec, Lord Dorchester, decides that Point Frederick will serve as the base for the provincial marine and a naval dockyard starts to get laid out.

And how did French-speaking workers wind up

in Kingston? Well, Lake Ontario was French before it was English.

So Fort Frontenac was French.

The French Navy operated on Lake Ontario before the English came.

As always, today is a day full of Canadian history.

Fort Frontenac fell to the British on this day back in 1758.

Modern dance pioneer Maude Allison was born on this day in 1873.

And on this day back in 1953, Alex Lifeson, Canadian musician and co-founder of rock gods Rush, was born.