Exploring

King François I of France entrusted Jacques Cartier with three Atlantic voyages (1534-1542), hoping to contest the Spanish naval monopoly and find a new route to the riches of Asia. Although Cartier failed to find spices and gold, the man from Saint-Malo kindled French ambition to explore North America.

The development of a hydrographic school in Normandy during the 16th century was an expression of this northwestern French province’s maritime dynamism. 

Voyages of exploration and their attendant colonial objectives resumed under Henri IV, whose reign (1589-1610) marked the return of civil and religious peace.

From the 16th to the 18th century, explorers, geographers, and the French government were committed to the search for a passage that would facilitate travel between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, allowing straightforward access to the treasures of the Asia-Pacific World.

Long celebrated as the discoverer of the Mississippi and the founder of Louisiana, René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle (1643-1687) was, strictly speaking, neither.

At the beginning of the 18th century, Europeans had little to no knowledge of the Pacific coast from Mexico to the Arctic Circle. There was a double uncertainty in the North Pacific: Was North America connected to Asia? Did a passage exist that would facilitate travel between the Atlantic and Pacific?

Canadian caterers and explorers, Pierre Gaultier de La Varennes et de La Vérendrye (1685-1749) and his three sons Jean-Baptiste, Pierre and François, searched for a hypothetical "Western Sea" from 1731 to 1744 .