Pierre Boucher's coat of arms and motto

User Guide

[Objectives]||[Description of Contents]||[Educational Notes]

Site Objectives

• Using an imaginary travel diary to decribe the first explorations of Pierre Boucher of Boucherville in New France.

• Using maps, illustrations and texts to recount the immigration of French colonists to New France in the XVIIth century.

• Using maps, illustrations and texts to discover the lifestyle of XVIIth century colonists and explorers in New France.

• Providing information on the foundation of Québec, Trois-Rivières, and Ville-Marie (Montréal).

• Providing a time line to situate the French Regime in the History of Canada.

• Encouraging 9 to12 year-old students to write a personal diary.

• Giving access to historical documents via the information highway.

• Offering students the opportunity to exchange information and notes via the information highway.

Description of the contents

The activity is comprised of five steps; each step describes a different aspect of the immigration of a French family to New France in the XVIIth century, and is introduced by an excerpt from the imaginary diary of Pierre Boucher, the man who founded Boucherville. These imaginary excerpts only deal with the period between the time he was 13 and his first marriage. After reading each excerpt, the student will have questions he/she will be able to answer by calling up various other complemetary documents; these will enable him/her to better understand the daily living conditions of the first settlers and explorers in New France.

• Step One : Gaspard Boucher's project

• Step Two : The Departure of the Boucher Family

• Step Three : The Crossing of the Atlantic Ocean

• Step Four : Settling in New France

• Step Five : Exploring the Territory

In selecting the maps, illustrations and texts for the site, we tried to avoid those documents which are usually reproduced in textbooks. The site will thus complement the textbooks, which in turn will encourage the students to visit the site.

Educational notes

• Visiting the site must be more than a zapping session. In order to benefit from the visit, documents must be read according to a process involving student participation. We propose such a process below; you may adapt it to your own background and preferences.

A - Contextualisation / Anticipation. Before starting their visit, students must be told the reason behind the activity and what is expected of them. The description of the activity page was designed to this end; it may be useful to print it and give a copy to each student (or each team) as a reminder of the steps involved in the project.

Also, it is important to quiz students on their previous knowledge of the subject; in addition, students must ask themselves some questions before proceeding to read the documents. These are the objectives of the imaginary excerpts of Pierre Boucher's travel diary and the search threads comprised by the questions at the end of each excerpt.

B - Searching. After reading an excerpt, students should be left free to explore the background aspects that interest them most. The task of reading all the documents should be divided among the members of a team or the entire class. Each student will then be responsible for extracting the pertinent information and taking the notes which will be used for writing a personal diary.

C - Analysis. In the preferred academic process, the analysis must allow for the comparison, exchange and classification of notes. Each student (or the entire team) should summarize in writing their discoveries and impressions.

D - Presentation of the results. By pooling observations, the entire class will get an overview of the site. You may choose to exchange personal diaries in class or broadcast them to other classes or on the information highway; this step will ultimately promote knowledge and interaction between site visitors.

• The site cannot provide answers to all the questions the students may ask. Teachers must encourage them to complement their searches using their textbooks, dictionnaries and other printed and electronic resources.

• This site was designed to be visited in five 30-minute sessions. Taking into account the available capabilities for accessing the information highway, each class is free to proceed as it wishes.

For example :
- each team is reponsible for one step of the voyage;
- each team is responsible for one aspect (one thread) in each step;
- each student is responsible for one aspect of the entire voyage;
- students are free to explore the aspects they wish at any step;
- etc.

• In order to avoid overburdening the site, we restricted the number of links to the words that are essential to the immediate understanding of the texts. The words that appear in the glossary are only activated the first time they are displayed in a page. The facts and concepts that require more development can be accessed by clicking on the questions following the diary excerpts.

• The site can be accessed in text and text/image mode. For the best display, set your monitor to 256 colours.

• Students and teachers can send their comments to the Canadian Museum of Civilization at the following address :

Canadian Museum of Civilization
100 Laurier Street
P.O. Box 3100, Station B
Hull (Quebec) J8X 4H2

This site deals with the period of time when Pierre Boucher was a youth. There remains much more to be said on the adult life of this pionneer: his voyages, his first marriage with a Native, his second marriage with Jeanne Crevier, who gave him 15 children, his role as Governor of Trois- Rivières and the subsequent foundation of the seigneurie of Boucherville. Pierre Boucher, sieur de Grosbois et de Boucherville, died at the age of 95 and was buried inside the Boucherville church. The visitors to this site who wish to learn more about the life of this famous character should inform the Canadian Museum of Civilization, which could consider creating a second site that would explore New France further with Pierre Boucher.