Quebec Settlement, 1608

What it is

This is a black and white pen-and-ink drawing signed C.W. Jefferys at lower right. It shows a wooden fort-like settlement with a two-story log building, a watchtower and a palisade fence on a riverbank beside a cliff. A flag flies on the roof. People stand on a wooden landing, and canoes with paddlers travel on the river. The catalogue dates it to 1925 and titles it Quebec settlement, 1608, with a French label, Habitation de Quebec, 1608.

Why it matters

Jefferys was a twentieth-century artist who drew Canadian history for books and public audiences. His picture is an imagined reconstruction of the settlement Champlain founded in 1608, made more than three centuries later. It shows how the habitation was pictured in the 1920s, when many Canadians looked back on the country's early French and Indigenous history.

Look closer

• Which buildings and details does the artist include to make the settlement look realistic?
• Why would a drawing made in 1925 be used to teach about a place from 1608?
• Who appears in the picture, and what roles do they seem to have?