MARQUETTE — In celebration of French-Canadian Heritage Week in Michigan, the Beaumier U.P. Heritage Center at Northern Michigan University will present notable French songs from the voyageur period as part of the Beaumier Heritage Concert Series.

Beaumier Center Director Dan Truckey and Upper Peninsula Folklife Award recipient Dave Bezotte will perform “Songs of the Voyageurs,” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the center in Gries Hall at NMU. The event is free and open to the public.

The voyageur period refers to the time around 1670 when French-Canadian canoe-paddlers established fur trade routes into and beyond the Great Lakes to do commerce with indigenous tribes.

During the fur trade period, there were few roads in what is now Canada so the metaphorical highways of that time were the waterways of the Great Lakes, which voyageurs used to take long and difficult journeys to deliver cargo.