During Champlain’s lifetime two different calendars were in active use. Champlain used the newer and more accurate Gregorian calendar, which was adopted by Catholic France in 1582 in place of the older Julian calendar. Protestant countries continued to use the Julian calendar, mainly because the newer one was associated with the Roman Catholic Church. Dutch Calvinists did not shift until 1700. England and its American colonies continued to use the Julian calendar until 1752.1
In Champlain’s era, Julian dates were ten days behind, and the new year began on March 25. The Gregorian calendar corrected that accumulated error, and began the year on January 1. Gregorian dates were marked as New Style (N.S.) in England and stille nouveau (S.N.) in French. Julian dates were identified as Old Style (O.S.) or stille vieux(S.V.).
These different usages caused discrepancies in the dating of documents during Champlain’s lifetime. French Catholic writers used the Gregorian calendar; English writers employed the Julian calendar. Documents that passed across these national and religious lines were double-dated. An example is David Kirke’s letter to Champlain demanding the surrender of Quebec. Kirke’s dateline was “18. Juillet 1628. Stille vieux, ce 8. de Juillet stille nouveau.” He had it backward.2
A further complication arose from the old French custom of numbering the months by their place in the old Julian calendar, which began the year in March. The last four months of the year were referred to by the numbers in their original Latin: September was 7bre; October became 8bre; November was 9bre; and December was Xbre. To add another element of complexity, this Julian custom continued in France and New France long after the adoption of the Gregorian calendar, which shifted the first month from March to January and made September the 9th month, October the 10th month, November the 11th month, and December the 12th month. The names of the months remained the same and still do, a relic of the Julian calendar in our own time.
Customary units of time coexisted with these calendars in New France. In Quebec a short unit of time was called the pipe, which was the time it took to smoke a pipe full of tobacco. It also became a measure of distance. The eminent historian Marcel Trudel remembers hearing of a village that it was “three pipes away.”