Commentary
In 1497, John Cabot claimed Newfoundland for King Henry VII of England. He sent back reports of a fertile country surrounded by waters teeming with fish. It was the eastern coast of Asia, he thought, “the country of Grand Khan”—an imaginary conflation of the Chinese emperor and the ruler of the Mongols.
Other, later reports were less favourable. Jacques Cartier called the northern bank of the St. Lawrence River “the land that God gave to Cain.” Two centuries on, Voltaire sneered at “a few acres of snow.” At the beginning of the 19th century, settlers farther west had opened what they called a “howling wilderness.”…