Champlain map easy sell

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This article was published 14/11/2008 (6407 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An unidentified collector bought a rare print of a 396-year-old map of Canada created by French explorer Samuel de Champlain for nearly $250,000 — triple the expected price.

Hailed by Sotheby’s prior to the sale as “perhaps the most important single map” in Canadian history, the artifact had aroused suspicion in October because it closely matched the description of a map stolen from a rare books library at Harvard in 2005.

Harvard experts later compared digital images of the university’s missing map and the one offered at Sotheby’s and determined it was not the stolen item.

Champlain’s richly illustrated rendering of Canada’s geography shows the country as it was understood in 1612 — just four years after the founding of New France at Quebec City.

— Canwest News Service