Mr. Speaker, nearly 400 years ago, in 1603, Samuel de Champlain began years of exploring and mapping eastern Canada from the St. Lawrence to the Great Lakes.
In 1613 Champlain lost one of his navigational instruments, an astrolabe, near Cobden in my great riding of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke. Over 200 years later that astrolabe was found by a local farm boy and is now on display at the Museum of Civilization across the river in Hull.
In 1632 Champlain published a detailed map of Canada as it was known at that day and it has been acknowledged as a masterwork of Canadian cartography.
He wrote:
The great love I have always had for making discoveries in New France made me more and more eager to travel this proud country so as to have a perfect knowledge of it.
Nearly 400 years later that spirit of discovery is with us today in the form of students who are visiting from Champlain Discovery School in Pembroke. I salute these young students who will be our celebrated cyberspace explorers in the 21st century.