The spell of Sainte-Marie among the Hurons lies in the very land upon which it stands. Located along the shores of Georgian Bay - Samuel de Champlain's "mer douce" - and surrounded by wooded hillsides, this was the ancestral homeland of the Huron Wendat nation, a branch of the Iroquoian family. The Wendat were a matrilineal society of good traders and skillful farmers who called their land Wendake - the land apart.
Photo: By P199 - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2283244