Champlain’s impact on Algonquins to be focus of conference

This September, Carleton University will bring together artists, world-class experts and community heritage activists to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Samuel de Champlain’s passage up the Ottawa River. Champlain in the Ottawa Valley: History and Memory of an Encounter is a collaboration between academics, First Nations and the community, focusing on Champlain’s encounter with the Algonquins, its legacy and the implications for land occupation today. “It will be a critical reflection of what it meant for Aboriginal people and colonization,” said Prof. Dominique Marshall, chair of Carleton’s History Department, in a news release. “We’ll do a critical examination on the consequences of it and how people are remembering it.”