Acadia
In 1604 the fur trade monopoly was granted to Pierre Dugua Sieur de Monts. Dugua led his first colonization expedition to an island located near to the mouth of the St. Croix River. Among his lieutenants was a geographer named Samuel de Champlain, who promptly carried out a major exploration of the northeastern coastline of what is now the United States. Under Samuel de Champlain, the St. Croix settlement was moved to Port Royal (today's Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia),
a new site across the Bay of Fundy, on the shore of the Annapolis Basin, an inlet in western Nova Scotia. It was France's most successful colony to date and the settlement came to be known as Acadia. The cancellation of de Guast's fur monopoly in 1607 brought the Port Royal settlement to a temporary end. Champlain was able to persuade de Guast though to allow him to take some colonists and settle on the St. Lawrence, where in 1608 he would found France's first permanent colony in Canada at Quebec. The colony of Acadia grew slowly, reaching a population of about 5,000 by 1713.
Canada New France
After Champlain's founding of Quebec City in 1608, it became the capital of New France. The early days of the French colony were hard and the population grew slowly. Champlain took personal administration over the city and its affairs and sent out expeditions to explore the interior land. Champlain himself discovered Lake Champlain in 1609; and by 1615 he had traveled by canoe up the Ottawa River, through Lake Nipissing and through Georgian Bay to the center of Huron country, near Lake Simcoe. During these voyages Champlain aided the Huron's in their battles against the Iroquois Confederacy. As a result, the Iroquois would become mortal enemies of the French. In 1629 Champlain suffered the humiliation of having to surrender his almost starving garrison to an English fleet, and he himself was taken prisoner back to England. Peace had been declared by England and France however before the surrender, and the settlement was restored to French rule. Champlain would return from Europe to spend his remaining years in the colony. He became governor of New France in 1633.
The coastal communities of New France were based upon the cod fishery, and the economy along the St. Lawrence River was based on farming. French voyageurs travelled deep into the hinterlands (of what is today Quebec, Ontario, and Manitoba, as well as what is now the American Midwest and the Mississippi Valley) trading guns, gunpowder, cloth, knives, and kettles for beaver furs. The fur trade kept the interest in Frances overseas colonies alive, yet only encouraged a small population, however, as minimal labour was required, and also discouraged the development of agriculture, the surest foundation of a colony in the New World. Encouraging settlement was difficult, and while some immigration did occur, by 1759 New France only had a population of some 65,000. New France had other problems besides low immigration. The French government had little interest or ability in supporting their colony, and it was mostly left to its own devices. The economy was primitive, and much of the population was involved in little more than subsistence agriculture. The colonists also engaged in a long running series of wars with the Iroquois.
Despite its problems, New France continued to grow; however slowly. Settlers founded Trois-Rivières, farther up the St. Lawrence, in 1634. The farthest outpost of New France for many years was Montreal, founded by Paul de Chomedy on May 18, 1642. First known as Ville-Marie, this settlement, one day to become Canada's largest city, was begun as a mission post. One of the most famous of the leaders who accompanied de Chomedy was Jeanne Mance, founder of the Hotel-Dieu, the first hospital at Ville-Marie. The establishing of Montreal was part of a large Missionary movement based in France. Over the next 40 years after Quebec's founding, dozens of missionary posts would be built in Huron territory. The Huron's were under threat of attack from Iroquois tribes dwelling south and east of Lake Ontario. In 1648 the Iroquois invaded Huronia and wiped out most of the Huron's and French missionaries living in the territory. The Iroquois threat became a great obstacle against New France expansion. The French settlers and Iroquois would fight many battles around the outskirts of New France.
The feudal system of landholding, which had long been established in France, was adopted in the colony. The nobles, in this case the seigneurs, were granted lands and titles by the king in return for their oath of loyalty and promise to support him in time of war. The seigneur in turn granted rights to work farm plots on his land to his vassals, or habitants. In exchange, the habitants were required to pay certain feudal dues each year, to work for the seigneur for a given number of days annually, and to have their grain ground in the seigneurial mill. In underpopulated New France the habitants welcomed the fact that the seigneur was obligated to build a mill. They had no military duties to perform except their common defense against the Indians. There was little money and not much use for it; and so the taxes took the form of payments in chickens, geese, or other farm products. These obligations were hardly burdensome. The seigneurs were anxious that their habitants should wish to stay farmers, and there was as much land as anyone could till.
As in France, there was nothing resembling a democratic system of government in the colony. The senior official was the governor, appointed by the king. In the exercise of his almost absolute power he felt more responsible to the king in France than to the people he governed. Another post of French officialdom was established in Canada in 1665 with the appointment of an intendant, whose chief duties concerned finance and the administration of justice. However, there was sufficient overlapping of authority between governor and intendant to breed more jealousy than cooperation between the two offices. Jean Talon, who arrived in the colony in 1665, brought about rapid expansion of New France as its first intendant. He encouraged agriculture, immigration businesses and exploration of the region. In 1672 Count Louis de Frontenac arrived in the colony as governor. He built a fort at Cataraqui, near present-day Kingston, and brought the Iroquois into an enforced peace. He directed a series of major exploratory voyages to the interior. Among the greatest explorations were those made by Louis Jolliet, Father Jacques Marquette, and Rene Cavelier, sieur de La Salle. By 1682, however, the troubles between Frontenac and the intendant, Jacques Duchesneau, had become so serious that the king recalled both governor and intendant.
Source: Wikipedia.org