[EN IMAGES] This is how we stayed warm in New France

As Gilles Vigneault’s song goes: “My country, it’s not a country, it’s winter!” Indeed, Quebec and winter are inseparable.

As proof, whether we are talking about the Quebec Carnival, hockey, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, ice fishing, sliding or snowmobiling, we can clearly see that Quebec has been able to tame this harsh season. However, we could almost forget the fact that before having fun in the cold, we first had to learn to survive it… Let us therefore examine, using archives kept by the National Library and Archives of Quebec, how the inhabitants of New France knew how to adapt their winter heating to keep their homes cozy over the centuries!

^{“Canadians in Snowshoes Going to War on the Snow”. Image taken from Claude-Charles Bacqueville de La Potherie, History of North Americavolume 1, Paris, Chez Nyon Fils, 1753, between pages 50 and 51.}

1) Survive the winter in New France

Under the French Regime, the winter cold was particularly harsh as the globe grappled with the Little Ice Age, a period of climatic cooling between the 14th^e and XIX^e century. The Malouin explorer Jacques Cartier left us the first testimony of a Canadian winter when he wintered on the banks of the Saint-Charles River (where the Cartier-Brébeuf National Historic Site is located today) in 1535. Although memory popular of Quebec especially remembers the episode of scurvy from which Cartier’s men suffered, those of Champlain, in 1608, tasted the rigors of winter in an equally dramatic way: out of 28 men, only 8 survived until spring!

The first settlers therefore had to adapt quickly. Sometimes it’s just a matter of building new buildings. In the copies of French archives preserved by BAnQ, we read, for example, a memoir from 1680 revealing that the Notre-Dame-des-Victoires chapel was originally built to accommodate the inhabitants of Lower Town who were tired of braving the winter to go to the Notre-Dame church located in Upper Town: “As the rigors of winter are often the cause that we cannot carry the sacraments to the sick in the lower town of Quebec without exposing ourselves [à] major accidents, […] The Bishop of Quebec was obliged to allow a chapel in the lower town to serve as an aid to the parish and […] His Majesty is very humbly begged to grant a place called the Old Magazin du Roy to build the said chapel which must serve as an aid to the said parish.

2) Retain heat

Staying warm in New France means knowing not only how to heat, but also how to insulate yourself from the cold. Before long, the settlers discovered that the technique of building their homes was just as important as the heating methods. First, we limit the size of buildings: as Marie de l’Incarnation writes, “[…] “the extreme cold does not allow us to build larger spaces.” The construction material also counts for a lot, as evidenced by the Annals of the Hôtel-Dieu de Québec: after the construction of a masonry stable, the Augustines noted that “ […] nothing is less clean [à] this use that buildings [sic] of stone, because there is a pile of frost on the walls which gives a freshness [sic] very unhealthy for animals […]”.

^{While this house is made of stone, wood was the preferable building material against the cold. NATIONAL ARCHIVES IN QUEBEC (P600, S6, D5, P114) ANONYMOUS AUTHOR}

Wood, in fact, became the construction material of choice in the colony. Pehr Kalm, a Swedish naturalist who visited New France in 1749, described the typical Canadian dwelling: “Farmers’ houses are generally built of stone or timber, and contain three or four rooms. The windows are rarely fitted with glass; most often paper tiles replace glass. A stove [sic] cast iron heats the whole house. The roofs are covered in shingles. Caulk the cracks and cracks with clay. Outbuildings are thatched.” As historian Peter Moogk points out in his book Building a House in New France, the presence today of several stone houses dating from the French Regime gives us the false impression that they were more common at the time than wooden houses.

3. Wood: an easily accessible fuel?

As archaeologist Marcel Moussette recalls, the fuels used for warmth in the colony included charcoal, charcoal, peat and, of course, wood. Indeed, in a memoir on Canada, the former prosecutor of Auteuil wrote in 1715: “We must not think that the French accustomed to Canada suffer considerably from this cold, because having wood at will they heat themselves so much that it pleases them.”

^{Cutting saws, circa 1740. NATIONAL ARCHIVES IN MONTREAL (P178, D34) ANONYMOUS AUTHOR}

However, the wood reserves in the 18th century^e century no longer necessarily reflect the abundance of wood of the previous century. The impact of deforestation is felt especially near urban centers where we have to go looking for firewood further and further away. In 1749, Élisabeth Bégon offers us a testimony of the rise in prices: “Our dear little daughter is desolate. She says that wood is not cheap enough to make such big fires and that we would be crazy to stay in a country where you have to spend all your money on heating. Despite these words, which echo our own concerns about the high cost of living, firewood will continue to be the main fuel until the end of the French Regime.

4) Heating Hazards

Fire warms, that is obvious, but it can also accidentally destroy! We are therefore wary of fires. Among the notable disasters in New France, let us remember that of the Ursuline convent in Quebec which succumbed to the flames in 1650, and those of the intendant’s palace which burned for the first time in 1713 and again in 1725. The potential danger looms not only on individual buildings, but on entire neighborhoods, as recalled by the fire of Montreal in 1734. Following this, a slave named Marie-Josèphe-Angélique was accused of having caused the loss of around fifty houses and they execute him without proof. Prevention is better than cure, so, in March 1710, the Superior Council of Quebec issued an order for the sweeping of chimneys. This targets “negligence [sic] of the owners and tenants of the houses of this said City”, and obliges the citizens of Quebec to sweep their chimneys once a month to avoid fires.

^{19th century engraving depicting the fire of the Saint-Augustin wing of the Ursuline monastery of Quebec. NATIONAL ARCHIVES IN QUEBEC (P600, S6, D1, P875) ANONYMOUS AUTHOR}

The very act of fetching firewood can pose some risk. In his book on the tragic deaths in the 17th^e and XVIII^e centuries, Léonard Bouchard identifies at least 17 cases of accidental deaths linked to wood! Among other things, he raises the case of Jacques Bluteau who had “his head crushed by the fall of a dry tree”. Louis Côté, for his part, was killed in Detroit in 1762 by a dead branch that fell on his head. Charles Goguet was no luckier: in 1754, the tree he was cutting down also fell on his head. Last example, let us highlight Pierre Lereau of Charlesbourg who, in November 1711, was “crushed under his wooden journey”.

^{“On the twenty-fifth day of the month of November in the year one thousand seven hundred and eleven, we were buried in the cemetery of this parish by our priest Pierre Leveau, aged about forty and some years old, who died suddenly on the day of yesterday. by a trail of wood which crushed him, residents of St Antoine were present at his burial Jean Badeau and Nicolas Thibault. Parish register of Saint-Charles-de-Charlesbourg. NATIONAL ARCHIVES IN QUEBEC (E301, S7, D1681-1918) PHOTO: RÉNALD LESSARD}

From hearth to stove

^{“Close view from left to right: lead plaque from the erection of the first monastery (1697); cast iron stove plate from the Saint-Maurice forges, representing the baptism of Jesus by Saint-Jean-Baptiste; a cast iron pestle and mortar NATIONAL ARCHIVES IN QUEBEC (P600,S6,D5,P908) PHOTO: EDGAR GARIÉPY}

The use of the hearth seems to have been established since the first explorations of the territory, if we rely on Samuel de Champlain who said he saw the remains of a chimney at the place where Cartier had wintered a century earlier . In 1684, Baron de Lahontan underlined the importance of chimneys in the colony: “most of the houses are made of wood with two floors; the fireplaces are extremely large, because prodigious fires are made there to protect against the cold which has been excessive since the month of December [sic] until April.”

Today, for a good number of Quebecers in the countryside, it may seem completely natural to heat themselves with a wood stove. However, it was not until 1668 that we found the first documented mention of a stove, in this case at the Ursuline convent. Among wealthy people, stoves are made of cast iron. However, even if one could not afford such a room, the obligation to keep oneself warm pushed one to resort to ingenuity: one could make brick stoves equipped with a cast iron plate or ‘a sheet of iron. Marcel Moussette’s research reveals a variety of stove shapes during the French Regime: small ones, large ones, with tripod, “belted”, etc. However, beware of Sunday “patenteu”: an ordinance of 1673 prohibits any stove “unless it is in a chimney or unless one is made capable of putting them in”.

^{Stoves under the French Regime were not always made of cast iron, but could be made of sheet metal like this more recent example. Simon Jourdain installs his tin stove in his tent. NATIONAL ARCHIVES IN QUEBEC (E6, S9, P410G), PHOTO: PAUL PROVENCHER.}

If the Canadians at the end of the French Regime finally managed to get used to winter, this is not the case for all the new arrivals: during the Conquest, the French officer Bougainville grumbles about the “pleasure of women of this country to go in a cart in winter on the snow, or on the ice in times when it seems that we should not even go out out of necessity. Clearly, we’re not surprised that a tropical island bears his name… So, sometimes the best way to stay warm in winter is to escape it!

^{“Merrymaking by Cornelius Krieghoff. Museum of the Province of Quebec. NATIONAL ARCHIVES IN QUEBEC (E6, S7, SS1, P69085), PHOTO: NEUVILLE BAZIN.}

A text by Joseph Gagné, archivist at the National Archives in Quebec, BAnQ

• You can consult the Facebook page of Bibliothèque et Archives nationaux du Québec (BAnQ) by clicking hereand its website by going to here.
• You can also read our texts produced by the Société historique de Québec by clicking here.

To learn more about the topics covered

• Bouchard, Leonard. Tragic and violent deaths in Canada. 17th and 18th centuriesQuebec, Publications audiovisuelles, 1982, two volumes.
• Carle, Pierre and Jean-Louis Minel. Man and Winter in New France. Montreal, Hurtubise HMH, 1972. 206 p.
• Gagne, Joseph. “Winter and the Seven Years’ War”, Curious New France2019. https://curieusenouvellefrance.blogspot.com/2019/04/lhiver-et-la-guerre-de-sept-ans.html
• Moogk, Peter. Building a House in New France. Markham, Fitzhenry and Whiteside Limited, 2002 (1977), 156 p.
• Moussette, Marcel. Domestic heating in New France. Ottawa, Parks Canada and Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, 1971. 242 p.
• Would you like to give 400 years of Quebec history as a gift? Discover Reflections of Memory – Quebec in Images, an illustrated work from archives kept by BAnQ.