This major new exhibition has been produced in celebration of the 400th anniversary of French settlement in North America. The exhibition features approximately 500 artifacts and objects, representing all facets of life in New France. These have been drawn from some 40 institutions in Canada, the United States and France, bringing together one of the most extensive collections of New France artifacts for the very first time.

The guiding principle behind the exhibition is an examination of how new societies developed in North America. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, immigrants to New France arrived with certain traditions, behaviours and institutions. However, in order to survive and prosper in a challenging new environment they also had to adapt everything they knew — often borrowing heavily from the traditions and technologies of First Peoples, as well as developing new methodologies of their own. The early settlers of New France were thus able to create and sustain societies with a vitality and influence that continues to this day.

The exhibition is constructed around five main themes:
1) The origin, composition and interplay of society under the old regime from the perspective of trade (the unifying theme of the exhibition).
2) Daily life: family, feeding, clothing, hygiene and transportation.
3) Relationship with others: health and medicine, work, commerce, justice.
4) Cultural life: spiritual life, believes, education, communications, science, cultural events.
5) The heritage of New France: language, toponymy, religion, institutions, etc.

The primary goal of the exhibition is to provide an overview of New France at a time when its territory reached all the way from Hudson’s Bay to Louisiana — taking in both the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi River Valleys.

Communiqué