Jacques Cartier was a French-Breton maritime explorer for France. Jacques Cartier was the first European to describe and map the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the shores of the Saint Lawrence River, which he named "The Country of Canadas" after the Iroquoian names for the two big settlements he saw at Stadacona and at Hochelaga.
Portrait by Théophile Hamel, c. 1844. No contemporary portraits of Cartier are known.
This Spanish chart of the Saint Lawrence River, from c. 1541, contains a legend in front of the "isla de Orliens" that says: "Here many French died of hunger"; possibly alluding to Cartier's second settlement in 1535–1536.
The Fleet of Cartier was commemorated on a 1908 Canadian postage stamp.
Plaque on the statue of Jacques Cartier in front of the Gabrielle-Roy public library, in the Saint-Roch neighbourhood of Quebec City.
The Gulf of St. Lawrence fringes the shores of the provinces of Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, in Canada, plus the islands Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, possessions of France, in North America.
Anticosti National Park, Quebec
Magdalen Islands, Cap-aux-Meules, Chemin du Phare, tail of storms, winds and rough seas
Gulf shore at Cape Breton Highlands National Park
From the top of Pointe-des-Monts Lighthouse, Pointe des Monts bedrock, gulf side (East) 2004
