Wilmont Kreis

In 1608, Samuel Champlain began his fort which became the impregnable Citadelle of Quebec. This unapproachable fortress maintained the French Canadian hold on New France, but eventually, the overwhelming numbers of British troops as well as some bad luck for the French resulted to the ultimate fall to the fortress and the beginning of British rule. Following the fall, Pierre Allard succumbs to injuries and his fifteen-year-old son, Jacques makes arrangements to leave for the west with Canada’s renowned backwoodsman, Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, and begin The Allards Book Four: The Voyageur leading our tale into the frontier at the Straits of Detroit. Next week a departure into healthcare fraud and the soon to be released book, The Labyrinth. Read More 

In 1755, Major General Edward Braddock was appointed to lead a massive attack on the French fort at the Forks of the Ohio to gain control of the area and facilitate settling by the ever growing population of English colonial farmers searching for land. In spite of his overwhelming superior force, Braddock is foiled by a lack of knowledge of back woods fighting in which the French-Canadians were well schooled. Read More 

The Forks of the Ohio River play a large part in the French and Indian War. The confluence of the Ohio, Allegheny, and Monongahela Rivers at the present site of Pittsburgh, were strategic for trading. They also were the gateway to the great land of Ohio desperately needed by the enlarging mass of British farmers but controlled and guarded by the French to protect the fur trade. This strategic area was pivotal in the events leading to the Seven Years War, more commonly known in North America as the French and Indian War. Read More 

Just before the advent of the French and Indian War, a group of two families were recruited from north of Quebec to Detroit to help run the windmills. The Tremblay (later Trombley) and Laforest families came to Detroit by canoe. Along with the arduous voyage, this included portaging Niagara with sixteen children, thirteen of whom were quite young and four were one year old or younger. The story of this voyage to bring two great families to the city in the wilderness is well recorded and recently reported in Michigan’s Habitant Heritage, a periodical filled with priceless details of the French-Canadian-Detroit society. I could not help including it in the book, as these families will play a large part in the story into the twentieth century. Read More 

The voyage to the west to relieve the military explorer Pierre Gauthier de la Vérendrye did take place as did the diversion of a few participants farther west to find the ever elusive Northwest Passage. The group did become stranded for the winter around Yellowstone. The Vérendrye plaque was unearthed in South Dakota by some curious school children 100 years ago and did substantiate what had once been thought to be merely a legend. It is highly possible that this group did, as they claimed become the first white men to see the east-facing slopes of the Rocky Mountains. Read More 

In 1742 the legendary voyageurs Joseph Parent and Pierre Roy appear to recruit Pierre and Toussaint for a voyage to the west. Parent and Roy are actual characters from history but I must confess that I have romanticized them a bit. I hope their descendants don’t object. I have taken the greatest liberty with Pierre making him the quintessential voyager with a body of steel, brain of wood and heart of gold. Of all hundreds of characters in the Allard series, he is certainly one of my favorites. Read More 

In 1734 Jean-Baptiste Allard and Joseph are invited to travel to Detroit where they had gone years before with Antoine Cadillac. They bring along their now eighteen year old sons, Pierre and Toussaint giving the boys the opportunity to see the City in the Wilderness and meet some of its younger residents including the son of an Indian chief—a young man known as Pontiac who will play a large part in The Allards Book Four: The Voyager. Read More 

As with all eight books of the Allard Series, Book Three begins with a scene from the present, in this case an iceboat scene on Lake St. Clair. Growing up in the 1950’s on this diminutive body of water in the chain of Great Lakes, I could not write about the area without including this magical craft. In my life I have had some thrilling experiences, but I remember a ride in my father’s iceboat as the most thrilling by far. I even included a possibly anachronistic scene in the body of the book. Read More 

Young Pierre Allard is completely Canadian. For his generation, France is only a word heard on rare occasions in tales of days long past. The Allard family has continued its close relationship with the Algonquin family of old Henri. His grandson, Joseph has married a girl with an Algonquin mother and French trapper father making the family metis or mixed blood as they take on the family name of de Baptiste. His son, Toussaint will become the lifelong friend of young Pierre Allard. Read More 

The Allards Book Three: Peace and War follows the Allard family from 1725 to 1761. Opening on the Peace of Utrecht, French Quebec is enjoying a peaceful and productive period. The lack of hostilities in Europe has resulted in tranquility in the colony where he habitants can tend their fields and enjoy life. Unfortunately life in the wilderness is generally not so tranquil for long when a great plague robs many families of their children. Ultimately the peace ends in 1750 with renewed hostilities across the sea which will spread westward across the Atlantic resulting in the ultimate fall of French Canada to the British in 1760.  Read More