You might think it was too trivial for me to hear about how may kids Mr. Picard had when he came to Quebec. Apparently he fathered several families and came back to continue his work as a carpenter because he could not reside permanently. The reason was that he was Protestant, a fact that would be a totally ridiculous reason to keep someone from settling in a new country.
I thought the mentioning of this person's name and others who produced children in the new world, a vain attempt at describing how desperate New France was to build the colonial population. In fact French Canada was sorely behind the rest of the nation when there an attempt to offset the competition felt by the European powers to maintain an exclusive hold here. But since I visited this avant-garde museum built on the foundations of a former customs house, who cared about how the population dwindled? Curiously enough this is exactly what is happening in Quebec where modern couples are not having more than one child and the population of the rest of Canada is largely a thin strip along the American border.
On more than one occasion France had to intervene in the demographics and keep the French nation from disappearing so in the 1600's a couple of hundred were sent largely from an orphanage, to mate with traders and craftsmen who were already here. Still because of disease and warfare with the Iroquois it became necessary for fresh blood to be shipped over. In fact in 1663 more French soldiers were shipped to fight the natives living in the territory the French occupied and women were exported to because previous intermarriage attempts to raise the population had failed. Coming over to the new world to face warfare, disease and lack of proper nutrition just was not popular with the establishment back in the old country.
