When the King died, Le Caron renounced any ecclesiastical advancement and joined the Recollects, a reform branch of the Order of Friars Minor who followed a strict life of poverty, with whom he made his profession in 1611.
In 1615, Samuel de Champlain brought four Recollect friars to New France, including Le Caron, as missionaries to the Indians.
Le Caron reached Canada on May 25 and immediately accompanied some fur-traders to Sault St. Louis.
[2][3] Le Caron returned to the Sault, and went into the land of the Hurons, being the first to visit their settlements and preach the Gospel, preceding even Champlain.
[3] He thus became one of the first Europeans to see Lake Huron,[4] which he reached by the end of July, a few days before Champlain also arrived.
In 1616, Le Caron returned to France with Champlain, to look after the spiritual and material interests of the colony.
During this time he celebrated the wedding of Louis Hébert’s eldest daughter Anne to Étienne Jonquet, the first recorded Christian marriage in Canada.
[1] The Bibliotheca Universa Franciscana of Jean de S. Antoine, II (Madrid, 1732), 243, says on the evidence of Arthur of Rouen in his Martyrologium Franciscanum under date of 31 August, that Le Caron wrote also a Latin Quærimonia Novæ Franciæ (Complaint of New France).