Le chevalier de Montmagny: Premier gouverneur de la Nouvelle-France by Jean-Claude Dubé (review)

Book Reviews 697 countered were altered by her presence and by the ministrations ofthe Companions ofthe Peace. She learned greater lessons about herselfand her capacity for bravery, adventure, compassion, and fun than she did about the importance of English institutions in a new setting. From the people around her, she learned to respect diversity, acquiring humility in the experience. This wonderful collection illuminates women's lives as immigrants and as friends, offers examples ofthe rigours offrontier life, and forces us to keep rethinking our ideas about the transmission of cultures. It could find a place in a women's history class, in a class on colonization, and in a class on frontiers. All readers will enjoy its depictions of the physical difficulties and emotional sustenance in the life of Monica Storrs and will admire, perhaps even envy, her courage, wit, and independence . ELIANE LESLAU SILVERMAN University ofCalgary Le chevalier de Montmagny: Premier gouverneur de la Nouvelle-France. JEANCLAUDE DUBE. Saint-Laurent: Fides 1999. Pp. 432, illus. $29.95 This biography ofthe first governor of New France begins with a reconstruction of the Huault family tree and the revelation that its noble origins were largely invented, a not uncommon practice as one recalls the fabricated ancestry of Colbert, minister ofmarine and colonies, and Jean Talon, first intendant in Canada. In spite ofmeagre primary documentation , Jean-Claude Dube is able to sketch Montrnagny's youth, his years at the Jesuit college ofLafleche, frequented by the intellectual elite ofthe period, followed by brieflegal studies at the University ofOrleans, and then the customary tour ofItaly for young men ofhis social class. Dube, whose earlier work on the social ascendancy ofthe intendants ofNew France remains a classic, summarizes four formative elements of Montmagny's career: family religiosity, Christian humanism at college, traditional noble behaviour associated with the university, and the deepening of a sense of heroic Christian action during his Italian sojourn. These, the author affirms, made Montrnagny's entry into the military Knights ofMalta entirely comprehensible, ifnot predictable. The next stage of his career was as a Hospitaller privateer, a risky business in the Mediterranean, which earned him honour and prestige, but the loss ofa fortune. The Hospitallers put him in touch with members of the Company of New France, opening a third stage of his life. This connection is of the greatest interest to us in terms of Canadian history, and the author proceeds to mine notarial archives to identify 698 The Canadian Historical Review fellow Hospitallers and their lineage. What emerges from this meticulous research is that there was a cabal of lay divots, as one author described it, who worked together with the Jesuits in laying the foundations ofa French Catholic colony in North America. From the moment he set foot on Canadian soil, Montmagny won universal approval, at least according to the Jesuit chroniclerwho seemed to direct the governor's religious sentiments to advantage. In all his activities, whether land grants, town planning, or expanding educational and welfare services, Montmagny worked closely with the religious elite. The absence of personal or company archives leaves us with little information about the commercial activities of what was primarily a commercial counter, and only secondarily an agricultural settlement. Montmagny pursued the Indian policy ofChamplain and the missionaries . The sad story ofthe Franco-Iroquoian hostilities of1641-9 is retold entirely from the Jesuit perspective (and presumably the governors' perspective), and therefore fails to underscore the predominant economic motives for a growing policy ofextinction ofthe Five Nations on the part of the Company of New France. Studies by Jose Brandao and Matthew Dennis could have provided a more critical assessment of Montmagny's administration. Herein lies the connecting thread between the different careers of Montmagny: the crusader knight fighting first against the Muslims, then against the Iroquois, in the defence or advancement ofCatholicism. By the end of his governorship at Quebec, the religious elite was firmly entrenched in the colony, having achieved a landed base, political influence, and social dominance through the dispensing of education and hospitalization. He was ready to move on to St Christophe in the Caribbean, but there, although the Jesuits were willing to support him, time did not permit him to...