The French Period

Étienne Brulé, a French explorer, was probably the first European to enter the region, ascending the Ottawa River in 1610. He was sent by Samuel de Champlain to learn the language and culture of the Huron Indians, a peaceful Iroquoian tribe. Champlain himself explored the Ottawa area in 1613, attempting to find a waterway to Asia. In 1615 he visited Huronia, a fertile area in southern Ontario that was the home of the Hurons. Meanwhile, in 1610, Henry Hudson, an Englishman, had discovered the bay later named for him.

Exploration continued throughout the century. In 1634, Jean Nicolet discovered Lake Michigan. Pierre Radisson and the Sieur de Groseilliers traveled as far as the western end of Lake Superior, 1658–59. The Sieur de La Salle, Jacques Marquette, and Louis Joliet also explored Ontario while on expeditions to the interior of North America in the last half of the 17th century. With the explorers came fur traders, soldiers, and missionaries.

New France, as the area claimed by the French was called, extended from the Gulf of St. Lawrence westward beyond Lake Superior. It also included the Mississippi Valley to the Gulf of Mexico in what is now the United States. In 1673 the Comte de Frontenac, governor of New France, built Fort Frontenac on the St. Lawrence River on the site of present-day Kingston. Another important post, Fort Niagara, was established on the Niagara River (in what is now New York) in 1726. These posts helped to give the French control of the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes region. English penetration of Ontario proceeded from the north around Hudson's Bay in territory claimed by the English and developed by the Hudson's Bay Company.

During the 17th and 18th centuries, the French and British competed for the valuable fur trade and for the allegiance of the Indians. This competition led to a series of wars, with Britain emerging as the victor; by the Treaty of Paris (1763), which concluded the French and Indian War, France ceded all of Canada to Great Britain.