Where did he land?

Where did he land?

For the first time, Europeans reach Montreal Island on October 2, 1535. Today, most historians believe that the French landed at the point where the Jacques Cartier Bridge stands today. Nevertheless, some historians maintain the hypothesis that the expedition reached Montreal Island not through the St. Lawrence, but rather through the Des Prairies River. Aristide Beaugrand-Champagne, an architect with a passion for history, advanced this theory for the first time in the 1930s.

Indeed, Beaugrand-Champagne noted than to a navigator sailing upstream towards Montreal along the north shore of the St. Lawrence, the Des Prairies River would appear as the natural continuation of the St. Lawrence. The author pointed out that almost all the places identified by Cartier during his first voyage upstream are on the north shore of the St. Lawrence. Moreover, native villages were located primarily on the north shores.

According to Cartier, on October 3, 1535, along with twenty well-armed sailors and gentlemen, he walked from the shore where the French had landed to the village. After about a league and a half, they met one of the leading lords of Hochelaga, but they still had not reached their destination. They continued on and saw the tilled fields after about half a league from there.

If Hochelaga was at the foot of the mountain, about where McGill University is today, why did Cartier have to walk two leagues from the St. Lawrence to reach it? Beaugrand-Champagne says, this distance would be reasonable from the foot of Gros Sault in the Des Prairies River.

Anyway, no one has ever conclusively determined the site of the old Iroquois village of Hochelaga. The question has attracted the attention and been the subject of many discussions, but it remains a mystery.

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