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Updated: June 27, 2025
In the meantime what was going on in Canada? Talon's successor, M. de Bouteroue, was upright and intelligent, but without Talon's masterly gifts and activity. He attended principally to the administration of justice. At the judicial sittings of the Sovereign Council he was almost always present; he himself heard many cases, and often acted as judge-advocate.
After more than two centuries, Talon's idea remains stamped on the soil; and the plans of the Charlesbourg villages as surveyed in our own days show distinctly the form of settlement adopted by the intendant. Proper dwellings were made ready to receive the new-comers. Then Talon proceeded with the establishment of settlers. To his great joy some soldiers applied for grants.
No one has ever since found any trace of Talon's coal deposit, and the geologists of today are quite certain that the intendant had more imagination than accuracy of statement or even of elementary mineralogical knowledge.
Several of Jean Talon's brothers were serving in the administration or the army, and, after a course of study at the Jesuits' College of Clermont, Jean was employed under one of them in the commissariat. The young man's abilities soon became apparent and attracted Mazarin's attention.
He was an officer of the king's army who had come to Canada with Talon. The fact that his wife was Talon's niece had put him in the pathway of promotion. The order of St Sulpice, holding in fief the whole island of Montreal, had power to name the local governor. In June 1669 the Sulpicians had nominated Perrot, and two years later his appointment had been confirmed by the king.
M. de Courcelle, who was beginning to feel some uneasiness at Talon's great authority and prestige, refused to sign the proceedings of that day, inscribing these lines in the council's register: 'This decree being against the governor's authority and the public good, I did not wish to sign it. At the beginning of the following year Talon, whose attention perhaps had not been called to Courcelle's written protest, requested the adoption of a similar decree; and the council did not hesitate to confirm its previous decision, notwithstanding the governor's former opposition, which he reiterated in the same terms.
Talon's buoyant reports and his incessant entreaties for a strong and active colonial policy could not fail to enlist the sympathy of two such statesmen as Louis XIV and Colbert. This is perhaps the only period in earlier Canadian history during which the home government steadily followed a wise and energetic policy of developing and strengthening the colony.
For each new-comer the king assumed the total expense of clearing two acres, erecting a house, preparing and sowing the ground, and providing flour until a crop was reaped all on condition that the occupant should clear and cultivate two additional acres within three or four years, presumably for allotment to the next new-comer. Such were the broad lines of Talon's colonization policy.
However, I shall try to follow another direction; for, notwithstanding the excellent mine at Cape Breton, it would be a capital thing for the ships landing at Quebec to find coal here. Is there actually a coal-mine at Quebec hidden in the depth of the rock which bears now on its summit Dufferin Terrace and the Chateau Frontenac? We have before us Talon's official report.
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