Pierre Du Gua de Monts

Pierre Du Gua de Monts was a French merchant, explorer and colonizer who founded the earliest permanent French settlements in North America

He was born in Royan, France in the protestant family. His first travel to Canada was probably made in 1600 with Pierre de Chauvin de Tonnetuit, naval and military captain and a lieutenant of New France. Three years later, Du Gua received royal patents for the colonization, commercial exploitation and government of Acadia. In 1604 he established a settlement on the Île Ste-Croix (Dochet Island), at the mouth of the St. Croix River. Among the first colonizers stood out Royal cartographer Samuel de Champlain and Mathieu de Costa, a legendary linguist and the first black man known to have visited Canada.

Forced by climate and disease to move to Port-Royal in 1605, the colony survived and prospered until the revocation of de Monts's fur-trading monopoly in 1607 because of other merchants’ protests against the granted monopoly. Consequently, Du Gua and his settlers were compelled to abandon the colony and return to France.

Later, Du Gua turned his attention to the St Lawrence Valley. Although he never returned to America, he sent Champlain to found a trading post at Québec in 1608, thus playing establishing of the first permanent French colony in North America.

He died in 1628, in the nearby castle of Ardenne in Fleac-Sur-Seugne.