Along a River: The First French-Canadian Women

About this book

French-Canadian explorers traders and soldiers feature prominently in this countrys storytelling but little has been written about their female counterparts. In Along a River award-winning historian Jan Noel shines a light on the lives of remarkable French-Canadian women immigrant brides nuns tradeswomen farmers governors wives and even smugglers during the period between the settlement of the St. Lawrence Lowlands and the Victorian era. Along a River builds the case that inside the cabins that stretched for miles along the shoreline most early French-Canadian women retained old fashioned forms of economic production and customary rights over land ownership. Noel demonstrates how this continued even as the world changed around them by comparing their lives to those of their contemporaries in France England and New England.Exploring how the daughters and granddaughters of the filles du roi adapted to their terrain turned their hands to trade and even acquired surprising influence at the French court Along a River is an innovative and engagingly written history.