The first recorded free black person to arrive in Canada.

 

Pierre Dugua de Mons (or Du Gua de Monts; c. 1558 – 1628) was a French merchant, explorer and colonizer. A Calvinist, he was born in the Château de Mons, in Royan, Saintonge (southwestern France) and founded the first permanent French settlement in Canada. He travelled to northeastern North America for the first time in 1599 with Pierre de Chauvin de Tonnetuit.

 

In 1604, Du Gua organized an expedition, underwritten by merchants in Rouen, Saint-Malo, and La Rochelle, and left France with 79 settlers including François Gravé Du Pont as senior officer,
Royal cartographer Samuel de Champlain,
 the Baron de Poutrincourt,
 a priest Nicolas Aubry,
 Mathieu de Costa: a legendary linguist, the first registered black man to set foot in North America,
 and a Protestant member of the clergy.

Mathieu da Costa (sometimes d'Acosta) was a member of the exploring party of Pierre Dugua, the Sieur de Monts, and Samuel de Champlain that travelled from France to the New World in the early 17th century. He was the first recorded free black person to arrive on the territory of today's Canada.

 

 

In March 1604, with five ships carrying 120 men, Dugua set sail from France to establish an advance settlement in the New World with the view to later colonization. After exploring various possible locations, Dugua decided on an island in the estuary of the St. Croix River, now the international boundary separating Canada and the United States between New Brunswick and Maine. By September, buildings had been completed and supplies were laid in for winter. Sadly, the Europeans’ lack of knowledge concerning the local climate was to cost them dearly. They were on the same latitude as temperate France and expected a similarly mild winter, and thus were unprepared for the Arctic airflow that brings bitter winters to that part of America.

Their river estuary became a death trap of broken ice sheets, making the island a winter prison. Provisions were quickly exhausted and, to make matters worse, the settlers ran out of firewood and began to freeze. By the time spring arrived, nearly half the original company had perished and the remainder managed to survive only with the help of the indigenous Passamaquoddy tribe. Luckily, Dugua had taken along a Native American who had returned to Europe with Martin Pring’s expedition[in 1603]. This Indian spoke the local Passamaquoddy and Beothuk dialects fluently, and with the settlers too weak to hunt or forage for themselves, he was able to barter for provisions. When summer came, the colonists moved to a more favorable location on the shores of the present-day Annapolis basin, in Nova Scotia, and in August Dugua returned to France.

Phillips, Graham. Merlin and the Discovery of Avalon in the New World (p. 161-162). Inner Traditions/Bear & Company. Kindle Edition.

Arcadia was the name Dugua christened the area of mainland America that the British called New England.

Phillips, Graham. Merlin and the Discovery of Avalon in the New World (p. 166). Inner Traditions/Bear & Company. Kindle Edition.