ABSTRACT
On 14 July 1855 (coincidentally and symbolically, Bastille Day) the French naval vessel La Capricieuse, under the command of Captain Paul-Henri de Belvèze, put into port at Quebec City. It was the first naval ship to fly the flag of France on the St Lawrence River since the English defeated the French on the Plains of Abraham almost a century before. Captain de Belvèze (1801-75) was on a mission to restore economic and cultural relations between France and Canada at a time when British free trade policy opened new markets to its colonies and when Britain and France were allied against Russia in the Crimea. During his six-week tour of Canada, de Belvèze visited Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto, and held discussions with prominent individuals on a variety of economic, cultural and military matters. When he set sail from Quebec City six weeks later to return to France, he carried with him a daguerreotype, by noted Montreal photographer Thomas Coffin Doane, of a man posed with four boys in historical costumes as a gift for the Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III, Emperor of France.
