Roberval After The Abandonment

While Marguerite was surviving her island ordeal, Jean-François de La Rocque de Roberval was attempting to build a colony.

The colony — established near what is now Cap-Rouge, a few kilometers upstream from the current city of Quebec City — had all the hallmarks of a project for which the planning had been ambitious and the execution problematic.

Roberval brought several hundred colonists to a location that was poorly understood, in a climate for which they were inadequately prepared, with agricultural practices designed for European conditions that did not translate easily to North American soil.

The colonists faced the same winters that were making Marguerite’s survival on her island so difficult.