Alastair Sweeny: Historian wants 'romantic' Cartier replaced with 'stocky' sea captain
An Ottawa historian has launched a campaign to place a small, largely overlooked image of a cloaked and bearded man from a 460-year-old map of Canada at the centre of this country's historical iconography.
Alastair Sweeny said the gesturing figure with black boots and a red hat may be the only authentic likeness of Jacques Cartier, the French explorer who first reached inland Canada and set the stage for European settlement.
Insisting the picture has been ignored for centuries in favour of "romantic fantasy images" showing a falsely heroic and handsome Cartier, Sweeny said the emergence of digital technology is finally allowing greater access to the 1547 map and enlarged, high-resolution reproductions of its "true Cartier."
"I have no doubt this is a portrait of Cartier the navigator," said Sweeny, an author, historical researcher and publisher of online history resources for teachers. "He is shown as a rough-bearded cloaked figure surrounded by a party of well-dressed ladies and gentlemen, soldiers and a priest -- the colonists he was charged with taking to the new world. He is clearly the leader of the expedition, and appears to be giving them instructions."
Read entire article at CanWest News Service
Alastair Sweeny said the gesturing figure with black boots and a red hat may be the only authentic likeness of Jacques Cartier, the French explorer who first reached inland Canada and set the stage for European settlement.
Insisting the picture has been ignored for centuries in favour of "romantic fantasy images" showing a falsely heroic and handsome Cartier, Sweeny said the emergence of digital technology is finally allowing greater access to the 1547 map and enlarged, high-resolution reproductions of its "true Cartier."
"I have no doubt this is a portrait of Cartier the navigator," said Sweeny, an author, historical researcher and publisher of online history resources for teachers. "He is shown as a rough-bearded cloaked figure surrounded by a party of well-dressed ladies and gentlemen, soldiers and a priest -- the colonists he was charged with taking to the new world. He is clearly the leader of the expedition, and appears to be giving them instructions."