Mr. Speaker, courage, leadership, tenacity, devotion—all great qualities found in Samuel de Champlain, who became the famous explorer and founder of colonies we know today.
Samuel de Champlain was a man of many talents.
Historian Samuel Eliot Morison notes that Champlain was an artist, an illustrator, an engineer, a military inventor, a cartographer and a gifted writer, whose book, Les voyages en Nouvelle-France , is a rich documentary source of Canadian history.
In addition, Champlain left us wonderful descriptions of the life of the aboriginal peoples he met, of nature and of the landscapes of New France.
I like to think that we as a people have inherited his determination, his courage and his conquering spirit.
Together, we have built a country that is the focus of admiration and whose quality of life is one of the world's best. All of this is thanks to our will, our fighting and inventive spirit and our dynamism, attributes mirroring those of the people who colonized our country.