Medieval French Town Honfleur entices you from the first glimpse. My favourite eye-catchers included narrow cobbled streets, manicured houses of Old Bassin harbour that squeeze one another and old mossy walls of the church of Saint-Etienne. But only after I left Honfleur did I learn that one of the greatest figures in Canadian history and "The Father of New France", Samuel de Champlain set sail to Canada from Honfleur to found Quebec City in 1608.

Honfleur was one of the first permanent settlements of Norsemen or Vikings established in the 9th century in what is now known as Normandy.

Honfleur sits at the mouth of the river Seine (the same that flows through Paris and Rouen) and has played a significant role over the centuries in protecting this vital transport artery and the rest of France from invaders.

Tourists tend to spend most of their time at Le Vieux Bassin (The Old Bassin), an inner harbour surrounded by narrow houses that seem to jump on one another.

Most houses there were built in the 16th and 18th centuries when the old harbour could not fit a growing number of sea vessels.

One of the old buildings at Old Bassin is Lieutenance where a King's Lieutenant used to reside. What's interesting about this building, apart from its odd appearance compared to other buildings at the harbour, is that it still has wall elements of Caen's Gate that guarded the entrance to the old fortress in medieval times.

During its glorious age in the 17th century, Honfleur was a large commercial hub that was making trades with North America, the Caribbean (known as the West Indies back then), Africa and the Azores. 

In the spring of 1608 in Honfleur, Samuel de Champlain with 27 other brave men started a journey to establish the first permanent French colony in Canada with a centre in what would later become Quebec City. It may not sound like a terribly difficult task, but not for those who are familiar with the brutal cold winters of Quebec City. French people who rarely see snow and experience sub-zero temperatures in their life, certainly did not expect that the mercury could drop to as low as -40 C / -40 F. Combine this with absolutely no infrastructure, shortage of food supplies and a hostility of native tribes, and you can imagine what the first winter was like for those brave French men. Not surprisingly, 20 out of 28 men didn't make it the first year.

But eventually, Champlain's enterprise has proven to be a success. He was a great diplomat which helped him build alliances with the vast majority of native tribes in modern Quebec and Ontario during the first decade of New France. Isn't it fascinating to accidentally find connections like the one between Honfleur and Quebec?