Although it is likely that Breton and Basque sailors were fishing The Grand Banks of Newfoundland in the very early 16th century, it is Jean Denys, from the Normandy port of Honfleur, who shows up in 1506 as the first documented French fishing boat captain to fish the Maritimes. The place once called “Le Hâvre de Jean Denys” (now known as Renews-Cappahayden) bore his name. An early map of the mouth of the Saint Lawrence Gulf is attributed to Jean Denys, although that attribution has been challenged.
Over a hundred years later, on Pointe au Père, Point Ferguson in what is now New Brunswick, Nicolas Denys and his wife, Marguerite Lafitte, built a home, a small fort with six cannons, and a garden. There, he wrote his Description and Natural History. first published in 1672 as Description geographique et historique des costes de l'Amerique septentrionale: Avec l'histoire naturelle du pais.
