A Young Mans Journey to New France

Rene Ouelet looking down at his village.

The sun hung low over the fields of Berry, spilling gold across the patchwork of vineyards, wheat fields, and grazing pastures. Narrow dirt paths wound between hamlets with thatched roofs and low stone walls, where chickens wandered freely and smoke curled from simple hearths. It was in one of these villages, tucked beneath the shadow of a lichen-covered chapel, that Rene Ouelet was born in the year 1644, during a time of deep uncertainty.

Berry was not a place of grandeur, but of quiet grace, a land of rhythm and ritual. The days were marked by the bells of the parish church and the seasons by the turning of the soil. With the thirty years war pushing East life, continued much as it had for centuries.

Rene lived in a modest, timber-framed home with a thatched roof and walls stained by soot and time. Inside, his mother Isabelle spun flax near the hearth, while his younger brothers tended to the goats beyond the village commons. His father, François, a weathered man with hands like oak bark, had long resigned himself to the rhythm of peasant life, where taxes rose, harvests faltered, but the soil remained. The family was close, but life was hard and daunting Rene couldn't help but wonder if there was more to life than this.

Rene had learned to read as a child from a visiting priest and spent nights poring over borrowed pages that spoke of New France—a distant, untamed world beyond the sea, where forests stretched wider than entire provinces, and land was granted to men willing to carve it from the wild. If he could get better opportunity at a more fulfilling life- and most of all a free life. After all France had changed, the long years of the Fronde had shaken the nobility and the young King Louis XIV was beginning to assert his rule.

Rene not more than 24 years old already had a yearning for a better future.  He understood the inequalities France was going through and understood his place in society would not grant him his dreams of freedom and purpose.

One evening, as the sun disappeared behind the wooded hills, casting the landscape in tones of deep bronze and violet, Rene leaned against the vineyard fence, a cool breeze stirring the hem of his linen shirt. He knew the soil here—its texture, its stubbornness, its scent after rain. He loved it, but he also knew it could never be his.

The road to La Rochelle was long and lined with shadows—both from the towering trees that flanked the paths and the weight of decisions behind him. Rene walked alongside a merchant’s cart, his few belongings packed into a coarse linen satchel: a wood-handled knife, a carved crucifix from his mother, and a small pouch of coins earned over two harvests. The crisp autumn air carried the scent of damp earth and fading leaves, with every step away from Berry, the land of his fathers he would leave not only his beloved parents but a whole village of family, friends and all he had ever known.

La Rochelle struck him like a blow to the senses. The coastal city thrummed with noise and foreign tongues. Salt air, fish markets, and the tang of tar from shipyards clung to everything. Dockworkers shouted orders beside towering masts, sails snapped like thunder above, and barrels of salted meat, gunpowder, and wine were rolled aboard massive timber ships bound for lands most in France would never see.

In a dark tavern near the port, he met an agent of the Compagnie des Cent-Associés, who, for a signed agreement, offered land, a year’s provisions, and the passage across the sea in exchange for a commitment: three years of labor in New France. Rene took the quill with a shaking hand and signed his name—a name that trembled into permanence on a page that would change his life.

That night, he stood at the edge of the dock, watching the ship Saint-Andre bob gently in the water. The moon cast a silver path across the Atlantic, and somewhere in that vast darkness waited a world he had only imagined—a place of snow-covered forests, endless rivers, and fierce winters. He had heard of its hardships, of the Iroquois wars and the brutal cold, but also of land so abundant it was measured in leagues, not plots.

Before boarding, he turned once more to the east. He imagined his mother lighting the hearth back in Berry, his brothers returning with the goats, his father bent over a wine press. He would never see them again, but he carried them with him—in his voice, in his craft, in his memory. With hope that he would be able to reunite and bring them over to New France he boarded the ship ready for the adventure that awaits.

As the sails rose with the wind and the ship creaked into motion, Rene pressed a hand to his chest, where his mother’s cross lay beneath his shirt.

René had never known such emptiness as the sea. Day after day, the Atlantic stretched out before him like a great, heaving wilderness—wild, cold, and indifferent. The Saint-Andre groaned under the strain of its voyage, its sails straining in the wind, its hull shuddering with every wave. Rene had never experienced anything like this before, growing up in land locked Berry, he never knew how vast and isolating the Atlantic was.  His whole world was already opening up to new experiences and people, he had met a few interesting older men the first day on the ship and had since befriended a man that goes by the name Jean Cote.

The voyage was going to be long. Four weeks had passed since they left La Rochelle. The coast of France had long since disappeared, swallowed by gray mist and memory. René stood at the ship’s edge, staring at the line where sea met sky. He held his cap tightly in his hand, the cold biting at his knuckles. His breath came out in white clouds. Behind him, passengers huddled under rough woolen cloaks, whispering prayers, sharing rations, or simply staring, hollow-eyed, into the distance.

Today the sea was calm, and the ship moved like a slow beast, steady and sure. But no sooner than Rene took in the stillness of the deep ocean imagining all of the things living below just below the smooth glass like top of the water - black clouds rolled in like an omen. Rene felt a pit in his stomach, men had spoken about the wrath a storm can bring in the middle of the ocean. They were right, for days the storms came in waves. Thunder cracked like musket fire, the wind tore at the sails, and salt spray soaked the clothes and skin of all who boarded the Saint-Andre. Rene worked without sleep, helping secure barrels and reinforce the rigging. The captain, a grim Gascon named Lemaire, shouted over the wind in a voice that brooked no fear. Still, fear crept in. It was all hands on deck, everyone Man Woman and Child fought for their survival.

Men prayed. Some wept. One man was swept overboard, too fast for even a scream.

and then just like that, the sea started to calm, leaving nothing but sorrows for the injured, and grief for the families left behind to endure the rest of this trip.

Below deck, life was dark the quarters were cramped—low-ceilinged, damp, and swaying. Barrels of salted meat, dried peas, and hardtack lined the walls all displaced and spoiled from the hard storms. The air reeked of illness and fear. Sickness and starvation started spreading on the ship. A boy from Picardy had died --fevered, then gone by morning. His body was lowered into the sea with only a brief prayer. No one spoke of it afterward infact 7 more men women and children be lain to rest in the wide open ocean with each passing crew member ship morale got a little more dismal and the weight of everyones choices started to sink in. With each passing day Rene was thankful that he had not taken ill.

Rene kept to himself, working where he could—helping secure crates, fetching and rationing water, even assisting the ship’s cook in the kitchen. He was used to hard work and he needed to stay busy. The calluses on his hands had come from years of turning the soil and hammering staves into barrels. But this was different. This was survival. Rations on the ship were running out and there was fear of running into another storm. Rene often felt so sheltered having grown up on a farm, but nothing would have prepared him for this journey.

Each night, he laid on a plank bunk with the crucifix from his mother pressed against his chest. He whispered her name in the dark, and his brothers’, and the name of the land ahead: Nouvelle-France. It sounded strange in his mouth, like something made of mist.

A shout rang from above deck—sharp, urgent. “Terre!” cried the lookout.

Rene rushed above, along with the others, blinking against the cold wind. In the distance, through the morning fog, rose the shadow of a coastline, dark and forested, bristling with pine and mystery.

New France.

Not just an idea now, not a word in a sailor’s tale—but land.

As the ship began to turn toward the bay, Rene gripped the railing with both hands and exhaled slowly. Behind him, France was gone. Ahead, a new world waited.

And Rene Ouelet was ready to meet it.

Ship approaching the shore of Quebec

The keel of the Saint-Andre groaned as it eased toward shore, cutting through the icy waters of the St. Lawrence River. Rene stood at the bow, shoulders hunched against the wind, as the mist slowly gave way to a land unlike any he had ever seen.

New France.

Towering pines and thick forest rose just beyond the rocky shoreline, the trees dark and still beneath a pale sky. Smoke curled from the chimneys of a few scattered buildings—a wooden chapel, a fortified storehouse, and a handful of rough, square homes with steep, shingled roofs, all surrounded by muddy lanes and palisades of sharpened logs.

The settlement was Quebec, founded barely fifty years earlier by Champlain himself. It did not look like a city—it looked like a survival post, fragile and defiant against the weight of wilderness that pressed in from all sides.

Rene stepped ashore, his boots sinking into the frost-hardened mud. The cold bit deeper here than it had at sea. The air smelled of pine and smoke, and something wilder—raw earth, moss, and a silence that felt ancient.

Officials from the Compagnie des Cent-Associés herded the new arrivals toward a gathering point. A list was read aloud—names assigned to plots of land and destinations deeper inland. René’s name was called with three others, marked for a seigneurie upriver along the Saguenay.

He was given a bag of tools, a small hatchet, a bundle of provisions, and directions to the edge of known territory.

There would be no town, no rows of stone houses, no parish bells ringing through quaint vineyards. His future lay in clearing forest, building shelter, and surviving winter—a man alone, staking a claim in a land that did not yield easily.

Later that night, as he sat beside a fire in the common lodging house, Rene ran his hands over the iron of the axe head, worn but solid. Around him, settlers whispered in low voices—some in Gascon, some in Breton, a few in the tongue of the Wendat. He did not know their stories, and they did not yet know his.

But they were bound by the same truth:

They had crossed an ocean for this.

This rough land, this cold night, this uncertain beginning.

Rene pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders, eyes on the flickering flame. He was tired, sore, and chilled to the bone.

But he was alive.

And tomorrow, he would begin.

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This short story is a fictional account based on real events. It is written to bring the lives of our ancestors to life and experience their journeys. Through these short stories we can live beside them.