Hélène's World: Hélène Desportes of Seventeenth-Century Quebec - Tapa blanda

Hélène Desportes, born in 1620, was the first child of French parents to be born in Quebec and to survive. For nine years, she lived in Samuel de Champlain’s Habitation. In 1629, the little settlement was captured by the English. Hélène, along with the majority of the other French settlers, was put on an English ship and taken to France. She returned to Quebec in 1634 and spent the remainder of her life in the little colony. She was married twice, had fifteen children, and seventy grandchildren. No portrait of Hélène exits. There are no memoirs, no diaries, nor any letters to guide the biographer. Nevertheless, there are public records and other primary sources from which we are able to piece together her life. This, then, is her remarkable story, set against the backdrop of France’s efforts to establish a colony in the New World along the banks of the St. Lawrence River.

Susan McNelley, with her Masters in the Humanities, has long been interested in women’s stories, particularly those occurring in other places and in other times. She has also been researching family history for some thirty years. A few years ago, she was able to trace her ancestry back to seventeenth-century Quebec and to Hélène Desportes. Thus began a quest to learn more about what life was like for the early colonists. Hélène’s World, thoroughly researched and documented, is the fascinating story of Hélène Desportes and the other seventeenth-century French-Canadian pioneers.