Preface

The first edition of Champlain's Works by The Champlain SocietyEarly in October 1905, a few months after The Champlain Society was founded, its president Byron Edmund Walker (Sir Edmund after 1910) appointed a publications committee, headed by Professor George Wrong, to draw up a list of potential publications.Almost the first on the list was "Documents Relating to Champlain," to be edited by Dr. Henry Percival Biggar, chief archivist for Canada in Europe, stationed in Paris and London.Champlain's writings are of undeniable importance to Canadians.They are the first good geographical, cartographic, and ethnographic descriptions of eastern Canada by the man who laid the groundwork for its exploration and firmly established the French presence in the country.The original plan was to have a work in four volumes, including a printing for the general public, ready for the Champlain Tercentenary, which was to be held in Quebec City in 1908.Owing to lack of funds, nothing happened until Sir Edmund obtained a publishing grant of $5,000 through the good offices of the prime minister, Sir Wilfrid Laurier.The grant came to The Champlain Society through the National Battlefields Commission -of which Sir Edmund was a member -which was organizing the Champlain Tercentenary events.1 Soon after the translators and editors set to work, they realized that this was a far more difficult project than expected.Although the translators thought they had a workable French text in Charles-Honoré Laverdière's 1870 edition of Champlain's Œuvres, which was supposed to have been compiled from the various editions and printings done during Champlain's lifetime, this was far from the case.Well into the project, The Champlain Society realized that it would have to hire a specialist to collate the variations between the known copies.After several attempts to find such a person, some ten years after the project had started, the Society finally settled on Professor J. Home Cameron, a specialist in seventeenthcentury French at the University of Toronto.Since there were few original copies 1 Heidenreich, Champlain and The Champlain Society.This book is a treatment of the founding of the Society and its involvement in editing and publishing the six Champlain volumes and the portfolio of maps.PREFACE xii pr eface of Champlain's books in Canada, Cameron visited archives in the United States, France, England, and Scotland, all on his own account.In retrospect, it was in large measure because of him that the project was a success.Another problem, all translators agreed, was that Champlain wrote poor French.Yet Champlain's French compares favourably with that of other explorers during this and earlier periods.Apart from J. Home Cameron, the translators exhibited a bias against the simpler, "undistinguished," "disorderly," and "formless" French of Champlain, presumably in comparison with the classic French texts of the seventeenth century which the professors would have taught.At the same time, they were relatively inexperienced with exploration literature.But even to experienced scholars such as Professor Cameron and native French speakers such as William Ganong and William LeSueur, the texts presented formidable difficulties.As the project advanced, so did the translators' quarrels over translation, interpretation, and style, especially with the chief editor, Henry Percival Biggar.Rather than leaving Champlain's ambiguities, an effort was made to guess what he was trying to say, and rather than leaving his "laboured pedestrian style," an effort was made to make it more intelligible to a modern reader.Biggar, who had the final decision on the text, was frequently accused of making Champlain "a better writer than he actually was," and it was sarcastically said that "Champlain wrote better English than French."Another accusation was Biggar's "irritating habit" of "correcting" his translators by occasionally substituting words which they considered incorrect.A third problem that developed was that the various translators were also expected to act as content editors.Some knew little about the history of the period, and only the botanist, Professor William F. Ganong, knew anything about the Native cultures and the natural environment that Champlain had observed.In Ganong's case, this was the east coast of Canada and its Mi'kmaq inhabitants.Especially misleading was some translators' habit of making assumptions about Native cultures that led them to wrong translations.For example, no distinction was made in English when Champlain wrote coupperant la teste [tête] (cutting off the head) and coupperant la peau de la teste (cutting off the skin of the head, i.e., the scalp); both were interpreted as taking the scalp, on the incorrect assumption that Natives only scalped.The word robbe (robe) was often translated as "beaver robe," on the faulty assumption that all Native robes were made of beaver skins.The Iroquoian group that Champlain called the Antouoronons were translated as the Onondaga, which they were not, and the French word salubre, used by Champlain to describe the water in the Great Lakes from Algonquin accounts, meaning "wholesome" or "fresh," was translated as "brackish" and "salty," following the translation by Richard Hakluyt, published by Samuel Purchas in 1625.

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