Episode 1: Worlds Collide (pre-1608 – 1759)

France and England fight over North America.

Jean Talon, Intendant of New France, oversees the marriage many of the Filles du Roi. Elizabeth Aubert marries a farmer named Aubin Lambert.

Samuel de Champlain builds the first European settlement (July to December 1608).

After a failed assassination attempt, Duval is put on trial, decapitated, and his head is put on display.

Only 1/3 of the Champlain’s men survive the winter due to scurvy and they are saved by the Natives and their knowledge of vitamin C.

However, Champlain tips the balance in the war between the Wendat and the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) (Summer 1609).

The Filles du Roi arrive in New France (1660 - 1670). Mostly orphans without a dowry come to New France. Their role: marry the settlers and produce large families.

About 800 women are responsible for 2/3 of Quebec’s ancestry.

Radisson and Groseilliers make a deal with the English (1659-1670) through the Cree; they help establish the Hudson Bay Company.

The Battle of the Plains of Abraham (September 1759) turned the colonies of New France (Louisbourg, the St. Lawrence, the Great Lakes, and the Mississippi) into British control.

Prior to the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, French Canadian farmers -known as Acadians- are uprooted by British forces and sent back to France, the French Caribbean, the British colonies along the Eastern Seaboard, and Louisiana. The impressive fortified city, known as Louisbourg in current-day Cape Breton, was demolished by British forces.

After decimating the French settlements on the Atlantic coast during the Seven Years War, the British, led by General James Wolfe, move inland, looking to take the fortified city of Quebec in 1759. He forces the French, led by Louis-Joseph Montcalm, to fire first and he leads his troops closer with the instructions to fire two musket balls simultaneously.

The British are victorious, but both Wolfe and Montcalm are killed in the battle.

New France falls and is abandoned for two islands known for cod fishing and a sugar producing island in the Caribbean.

Through colonisation, the small pox disease decimates 90% of Indigenous Peoples. The British Empire rules most of North America.