Wednesday, February 12th, 2025

Author Douglas Hunter says there’s more to Samuel de Champlain than his legend as an explorer who discovered Georgian Bay.

It is the topic of a talk he will give in Creemore this month as the guest speaker at the Tea and History event hosted by Purple Hills Arts and Heritage Society.

The event is a kick-off to society events marking the 400th anniversary of Champlain’s visit to the area.

Hunter aims to help people get past the image of an explorer cutting a trail thorough the woods and finding Georgian Bay.

“That’s not how the times worked,” he said.

Champlain visited the area, then Huronia, as a guest of the Huron Wendat. He wasn’t the first European to come here.

Champlain went where his hosts allowed him to go, said Hunter. “There were strategic benefits to both of them and it really was a trade relationship that they had.”

He said many European countries were positioning themselves as commercial players in the trade.

“The Dutch were major financial backers of Champlain. That’s where the money was that controlled the fur trade. It was a very complicated commercial relationship between Dutch and the French,” said Hunter adding that indigenous groups were aligned with different people and there was a lot of maneuvering to take advantage of the trade industry.

“I just want people to think a little different from what they may have grown up with in textbooks, with guys strutting up on shore, planting flags and claiming things for the king of France,” he said.

Hunter, a journalist, is the author of more than one dozen books on business, history and sports, in addition to other freelance writing.

He first delved into Champlain’s story while researching God’s Mercies, published in 2007. He came to the topic through research for another book about the Canadian experience that never came to fruition because he got sucked into the story of Champlain.

God’s Mercies was a finalist for both the Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Prize and the Governor-General’s Literary Award.

Hunter lives between Port McNicoll and Midland, not far from the Native villages that Champlain visited 400 years ago. He also sails in Georgian Bay, the same waters crossed by Champlain.

Hunter received a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship from the federal government in 2012, in support of my doctoral research currently under way and was awarded the William E. Taylor Fellowship as the outstanding doctoral award recipient by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Champlain left Huronia in May 1616. He never returned to Ontario, but his observations and writings are said to have shaped the early European history of the province.

Fran Breithaupt, one of the event organizers, said the event is meant to fulfill in part the heritage portion of the Purple Hills Arts and Heritage Society’s mandate.

Tea and History is a free event taking place at Station on the Green on Sunday, Jan. 18 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.

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