French Canadians

Famous quotes containing the words french and/or canadians:

    ‘Are ye right there, Michael? are ye right?
    Do you think that we’ll be there before the night?
    Ye’ve been so long in startin’,
    That ye couldn’t say for sartin’—
    Still ye might now, Michael, so ye might!’
    —William Percy French (1854–1920)

    The Canadians of those days, at least, possessed a roving spirit of adventure which carried them further, in exposure to hardship and danger, than ever the New England colonist went, and led them, though not to clear and colonize the wilderness, yet to range over it as coureurs de bois, or runners of the woods, or, as Hontan prefers to call them, coureurs de risques, runners of risks; to say nothing of their enterprising priesthood.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)