In regard to the domestic and social life of Champlain, scarcely any documents remain that can throw light upon the subject. Of his parents we have little information beyond that of their respectable calling and standing. He was probably an only child, as no others are on any occasion mentioned or referred to. He married, as we have seen, the daughter of the Secretary of the King's Chamber, and his wife, Hélène Boullé, accompanied him to Canada in 1620, where she remained four years. They do not appear to have had children, as the names of none are found in the records at Quebec, and, at his death, the only claimant as an heir, was a cousin, Marie Cameret, who, in 1639, resided at Rochelle, and whose husband was Jacques Hersant, controller of duties and imposts. After Champlain's decease, his wife, Hélène Boullé, became a novice in an Ursuline convent in the faubourg of St. Jacques in Paris. Subsequently, in 1648, she founded a religious house of the same order in the city of Meaux, contributing for the purpose the sum of twenty thousand livres and some part of the furnishing. She entered the house that she had founded, as a nun, under the name of Sister _Hélène de St. Augustin_, where, as the foundress, certain privileges were granted to her, such as a superior quality of food for herself, exemption from attendance upon some of the longer services, the reception into the convent, on her recommendation, of a young maiden to be a nun of the choir, with such pecuniary assistance as she might need, and the letters of her brother, the Father Eustache Boullé, were to be exempted from the usual inspection. She died at Meaux, on the 20th day of December, 1654, in the convent which she had founded. [119] As an explorer, Champlain was unsurpassed by any who visited the northern coasts of America anterior to its permanent settlement. He was by nature endowed with a love of useful adventure, and for the discovery of new countries he had an insatiable thirst. It began with him as a child, and was fresh and irrepressible in his latest years. Among the arts, he assigned to navigation the highest importance. His broad appreciation of it and his strong attachment to it, are finely stated in his own compact and comprehensive description.