Jacques Cartier sails into the Gulf of St Lawrence
A French expedition meets Iroquoian people at Gaspe and opens the river route into the continent
Quick facts
- Departure
- Saint-Malo, 20 April 1534
- Crew
- About 60 sailors, two ships
- Key encounter
- Stadaconans at Gaspe Bay, including Chief Donnacona's sons
- Sponsor
- King Francis I of France
What happened
Commissioned by King Francis I to find a route to Asia and possible riches, Jacques Cartier left Saint-Malo on 20 April 1534 with about 60 sailors aboard two ships of roughly 60 tonnes each. After a fast 20-day Atlantic crossing, he entered the Strait of Belle Isle, then followed the west coast of Newfoundland south, rounded Prince Edward Island, and put in at Chaleur Bay believing he had found the passage to Asia. A storm then drove him into the Bay of Gaspe, where he met more than 300 people from Stadacona (near modern Quebec City) who had travelled there to fish. Two sons of the Stadaconan chief Donnacona were taken aboard Cartier's ship and accompanied him back to France, where they would later act as guides and interpreters for his second voyage in 1535, when he sailed as far as Hochelaga, the site of present-day Montreal.
Why it matters
Cartier's voyage gave France its first detailed European mapping of the Gulf of St Lawrence and the river route that would become the spine of New France's fur trade and settlement for the next two centuries. His relationship with Donnacona's sons, alternately cooperative and coercive, set a pattern of dependence on Indigenous knowledge and guides that shaped French exploration for generations.
How we know
Cartier's own published account of the voyage survives and is the primary basis for Parks Canada's and the Canadian Encyclopedia's narrative of the route, dates, and the Gaspe encounter.
Sources
- The Canadian Encyclopedia. Jacques Cartier · Reputable sourcethecanadianencyclopedia.ca · The domain "thecanadianencyclopedia.ca" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Parks Canada, Cartier-Brebeuf National Historic Site. The first voyage (1534) · Primary source (author-declared)parks.canada.ca · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Related timelines
- The Age of Exploration → · Cartier's St Lawrence voyages are part of the broader 15th- and 16th-century race among European powers to map and claim the Atlantic world