Life in New France, 1713 to 1760

Imagine a winter in 1740

It is January along the St. Lawrence River. The snow is deep. Your family's log house has thick walls and a big fireplace or stove. You sleep near the warmth. Outside, the river is frozen, so people travel on it by sleigh.

What would you eat? Who would you owe rent to? Where would you go to school, if you went at all? This lesson answers those questions.

Who lived in New France?

By the 1760s about 70 000 French colonists lived in New France, mostly along the St. Lawrence River between Quebec and Montreal. The British colonies to the south had far more people: more than a million. This difference will matter in the Seven Years' War (Lesson 6).

The French colonists were known as habitants or Canadiens. Most were born in North America, not in France. They lived alongside and traded with First Nations (Lesson 3), and some held enslaved Black and Indigenous people (Lesson 4).

The seigneurial system

As you learned in Grade 5, the king of France gave large pieces of land, called seigneuries, to seigneurs. Here is how it worked in daily life:

• Each seigneury was cut into long, narrow farms that ran back from the river. That way, almost every family had a piece of the river, the main "highway" for travel and trade.
• The habitant cleared and farmed the land. Each year the habitant paid the seigneur small rents called cens et rentes, paid to grind grain at the seigneur's mill, and often owed a few days of work (the corvée).
• The seigneur had to bring in settlers, build a mill and sometimes a manor house.
• Farm families also paid the tithe to the Church: one twenty-sixth of their grain.

The farms are still visible today: fly over the St. Lawrence valley and you can see long, thin fields running back from the river.

Work and seasons

• Spring and summer: plant and harvest wheat (the main crop), oats, peas and vegetables. Look after cattle, pigs, chickens and horses.
• Fall: harvest, thresh grain, slaughter animals and preserve meat for winter.
• Winter: cut wood, make and repair tools and clothing, travel by sleigh. Many young men worked in the fur trade as voyageurs, paddling canoes to the Great Lakes and beyond in spring and summer.

In the towns of Quebec, Montreal and Trois-Rivières, people worked as merchants, artisans (blacksmiths, carpenters, shoemakers), soldiers, servants and officials. Louisbourg, a fortress town France built on Île Royale after 1713, was a busy fishing and trading port.

The Church and schools

The Catholic Church was at the centre of life. The parish church was a place for worship, news and community gatherings. Priests kept records of births, marriages and deaths, which are important primary sources today.

There was no public school system. Religious orders ran a few schools, hospitals and orphanages. The Ursulines taught girls in Quebec, and the Hôtel-Dieu hospitals were run by nuns. Most habitant children learned at home and on the farm, and many adults could not read or write.

Women in New France

Women ran households and farms and did a huge amount of work: cooking, spinning, sewing, gardening, caring for animals and children. Under the law of New France, a widow often took over the family's property and business.

Marie-Anne Barbel of Quebec is an example. After her husband died in 1745, she ran the family's businesses: she leased fur-trading posts at Tadoussac, managed fishing and sealing posts in Labrador, invested in property, and started a pottery that made dishes when imported ones were scarce during wartime. The intendant (a top official) remarked that "Widow Fornel has a company."

Nuns ran hospitals, schools and charities. Their work was essential to the colony.