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the failed colony among the Wendat

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

We visited "Ste Marie among the Huron" today, a remake of the failed French colony that was built 1200 kilometers from Quebec City near the south shore of Lake Huron.

Driven by religious belief, the colonists in New France devoted 20% of their citizens in the new world to a small site among the Wendat (or as the French called them, Huron) people in order to bring Christianity to the new world. After ten years of hard labour they had little show for it but hundreds of deaths and the near-extinction of the Wendat culture and nation. These were early times (the 1640's!) and the European diseases were still entirely new to the people of the new world. It simple proved too hard to overcome the deaths and the wars fomented by the British via the Iroquois.

After that visit I rummaged about in the basement of the cottage and found an old tent that my mother had bought many years ago. It's about three times the size of the one we'd spent the night in, and unlike last night's tent is actually long enough for me to stretch out in. I'll be sleeping in this one solo despite its large size, because Kenny is suddenly running a 39C fever and Mari doesn't want to expose him to uneven temperatures in the tent.