In the crisp winter of 1688, René Bourassa was baptized in the small settlement of La Prairie, just south of Montreal, in the colony of New France. He was the eldest surviving son of François Bourassa, a seasoned fur trader, and Marie Le Ber, whose family ties connected them to the heart of colonial commerce. From an early age, René learned the rhythms of the fur trade—the endless paddling of birchbark canoes, the weight of trade goods like cloth and tools, and the promise of beaver pelts that drove men westward into the unknown.
By his early twenties, René had taken up his father's mantle. He earned the nickname "dit LaRonde," a mark of respect among voyageurs, and set out on the well-worn routes of the pays d'en haut, the vast "upper country" stretching from the Great Lakes into uncharted territories. These were no easy paths: over 1,000 miles from Lachine near Montreal, via the Ottawa River, across Lake Huron, and over grueling portages where crews hauled 800 pounds of cargo on their backs. René started with seasonal trips to Ottawa territory and Michilimackinac, the bustling fur hub at the Straits of Mackinac in what is now Michigan. There, he bartered with Ottawa and other Algonquian peoples, exchanging European goods for furs that fetched good prices back east. Hired by relatives like his uncle Jacques Le Ber, these early runs in the 1710s built his name as a reliable hand, even as beaver numbers dwindled near the settlements.
Life on the water was demanding, but René made time for roots. In 1710, he married Agnès Gagné, and they had three children before her passing. A decade later, in 1721, he wed Marie-Catherine Leriger de La Plante, starting a family of five more, including sons René Jr. and Ignace who would one day paddle in his wake. These ties grounded him, even as the trade pulled him farther afield.
The pull of profit led René to bend the rules. In 1722, with local furs scarce and English buyers in Albany offering double the French price—two livres per pound of beaver against one in Montreal—he slipped south under the guise of carrying letters. The trip succeeded, but French authorities caught wind and fined him 500 livres for breaking the trade monopoly. It was a risk many coureurs de bois took in those lean years, and René weighed the sting of the penalty against the fat profits in his pouch.
By the mid-1720s, he was partnering with established merchants like Nicolas Sarrazin and François Lefebvre Duplessis Faber. In 1726 and 1727, René led canoe brigades of 20 to 30 men from Montreal to the distant shores of Baie-des-Puants, now Green Bay, Wisconsin. Contracts were notarized—Jacques Gervais signed on April 16, 1726—and the hauls were strong: piles of pelts that marked René as an independent force in the trade. Three years later, in 1729, he used another cover story, bearing official letters to New England for Governor Charles Le Moyne de Longueuil. It was a clever pretext for more smuggling, and this time, he evaded the patrols entirely.
The 1730s brought René into the grander ambitions of exploration. He signed on to supply Pierre Gaultier de Varennes et de La Vérendrye, the explorer pushing west for furs and a path to the Pacific "Western Sea." In 1735, René reached Saint-Joseph in Michigan, then pressed on to winter at Fort Saint-Charles on the Lake of the Woods in Minnesota. Amid Cree and Assiniboine allies, he traded and shared news of looming Sioux threats. Come spring 1736, ignoring orders to stay put, he set up a small post at Crane Lake on the Vermilion River. Tensions simmered with La Vérendrye over the decision, but René pressed on, leading a party of five, including Laurent-Eustache Gamelin, back toward Michilimackinac.
Disaster struck in June 1736. Near the Minnesota border, over 100 Prairie Sioux warriors ambushed the group, blaming them for arming their rivals, the Cree and Assiniboine. Captured and facing death by fire, René's life hung by a thread. Then his enslaved Sioux woman stepped forward, pleading with the warriors on grounds of tribal kinship. They relented, and René escaped with his men—though empty-handed. Days later, tragedy followed: the Sioux fell on La Vérendrye's trailing party, killing his son Jean-Baptiste and 20 others. The attack hardened French-Sioux relations and reminded everyone how thin the line was between trade and war.
René recovered at Michilimackinac, where he owned a lot and a house, managed by enslaved laborers. The late 1730s and 1740s saw him base there more steadily, sending his sons on runs to Lake Nipigon in Ontario and the Lake of the Woods. In 1744, young René Jr., born in 1718, took contracts for those routes, even stirring Dakota-Ojibwa tensions to French advantage. By then, René was shifting to oversight, his family forming a dynasty in the trade. Anglo-French wars loomed, but profits held from Ojibwa and Ottawa dealings.
The 1750s brought change with the Conquest, as British forces took New France in 1760. René adapted, continuing at Michilimackinac under new rules. In 1763, during Pontiac's War, Ojibwa allies under Chief Minweweh seized the fort from the British—likely overlooking René thanks to his decades of fair dealings. He rode out the upheaval and, by the late 1760s, retired to Montreal, where he owned a home and watched the fur world tilt toward British hands.
René's four decades on the water—2,000-mile round trips from May to October, winters in remote forts—captured the essence of the voyageur: endurance against rapids, cold, and ambushes, all while juggling French edicts, Indigenous pacts sealed with gifts, and the lure of illicit gains. His western runs bolstered La Vérendrye's posts, like Fort St. Pierre on Rainy Lake, staking French claims deep inland. As beaver grew scarce and wars raged, he handed the paddles to his sons, who pushed into Detroit and the upper Mississippi.
René Bourassa dit LaRonde died on September 7, 1778, in Montreal, at 89. His line endured—the Bourassas became known as "fathers of the fur trade," their legacy threading through descendants like journalist Henri Bourassa, born two centuries later. In notarial ledgers and explorer journals, René's name stands as a quiet testament to a life forged on water and wilderness.
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