October 2

On the 2nd in 1535, Jacques Cartier, the intrepid adventurer not the manufacturer of tasteful jewelry and watches, began settlement of what was to become Montreal, Quebec, Canada. I shouldn’t hold it against Cartier, though I will, but I have not cared for Montreal since a friend and I were refused entrance to a restaurant there because we could not speak French and we were wearing blue jeans. I suppose that the Quebecois aren’t all bad and they do serve at least one important function: they give the French someone to look down on.

Cartier gets credit for giving the name Canada to … well, Canada.
Mark Twain while on a trip to Montreal remarked, "This is the first time I was ever in a city where you couldn't throw a brick without breaking a church window."
Cartier was a very busy beaver. In 1541, he also started the colony of Charlesbourg-Royal but it was abandoned in 1542. The site is the location of present day Cap-Rouge, Quebec.