Amongst notable Metis people are television actor Tom Jackson

Replica of Port Royal habitation, located at the Port-Royal National 
Historic Site of Canada, Nova Scotia. 
French interest in the New World began withv Francis I of France, who in 
1524 sponsored Giovanni da Verrazzano to navigate the region between Florida 
and Newfoundland in hopes of finding a route to the Pacific Ocean. In 1 534, 
Jacques Cartier planted a cross in the Gaspe Peninsula and claimed the land in the 
name of Francis 1.[46] Earlier colonization attempts by Cartier at Charlesbourg-
Royal in 1 541, at Sable Island in 1 598 by Marquis de La RocheMesgouez, and at 
Tadoussac, Quebec in 1600 by Franqois Gravé Du Pont had failed. Despite these 
initial failures, French fishing fleets began to sail to the Atlantic coast and into the 
St. Lawrence River, trading and making alliances with First Nations. 
Domestic affairs 
In 1921 to 1926, William Lyon Mackenzie King’s Liberal government 
pursued a conservative domestic policy with the object of lowering wartime taxes 
and, especially, cooling wartime ethnic tensions, as well as defusing postwar 
labour conflicts. The Progressives refused to join the government, but did help the 
Liberals defeat non-confidence motions. King faced a delicate balancing act of 
reducing tariffs enough to please the Prairie-based Progressives, but not too much 
to alienate his vital support in industrial Ontario and Quebec, which needed tariffs 

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to compete with American imports. King and Conservative leader Arthur Meighen 
sparred constantly and bitterly in Commons debates. 
The Progressives gradually weakened. 
Their effective and passionate leader, Thomas Crerar, resigned to return to 
his grain business, and was replaced by the more placid Robert Forke. The socialist 
reformer J.S. Woodsworth gradually gained influence and power among the 
Progressives, and he reached an accommodation with King on policy matters.