BOOK I: Pelts of Empire

 

(A synopsis from Drifting Cowboy & Grok xAI)

Biographical notes on the key players:

Drawn from primary records, the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, notarial acts, parish registers, and contemporary accounts of the fur trade in New France. 

These families formed an interconnected web of merchants, seigneurs, voyageurs, coureurs des bois, soldiers, and settlers centered on Montreal and La Prairie (Prairie-de-la-Madeleine), a strategic Jesuit mission and frontier outpost south of the St. Lawrence that became a launch point for western trade.

Generation Z / Founders

Robert LeBer (c. 1601–aft. 1651) and Colette Cavelier (c. 1605–1694) of Rouen (or nearby Pîtres/Pistre, Normandy). Robert was a merchant. Colette may have been related to the explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. Their children who emigrated to New France included François, Jacques, and Marie (who became an Ursuline nun in Quebec). 

Jacques Le Ber (dit Larose / later de Saint-Paul de Senneville) (c. 1633–1706). Arrived in Canada c. 1657; settled in Montreal. Married Jeanne Le Moyne (sister of Charles Le Moyne de Longueuil et de Châteauguay) on 7 January 1658. Formed a highly successful commercial partnership with his brother-in-law; they operated stores in Montreal and Quebec and controlled key fur-trade routes. In 1667–1671 they purchased land from La Salle and built Lachine’s first fur-trading post (the still-standing Le Ber–Le Moyne House, the oldest complete building in Montreal). Jacques expanded into fisheries, West Indies trade, timber, and seigneuries (including parts of Île Saint-Paul and Senneville). He served in the militia against the Iroquois, joined war parties, and was ennobled in 1696 (purchasing letters of nobility for 6,000 livres). One of the wealthiest and most influential merchants in New France; he left a substantial estate. 

Jeanne Le Ber (1662–1714), daughter of Jacques and Jeanne Le Moyne. Goddaughter of Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve and Jeanne Mance. Educated with the Ursulines in Quebec. Rejected marriage (despite a large dowry) and conventional religious life; from about age 18 she lived as a recluse, first in a cell behind the Hôtel-Dieu chapel, later in a purpose-built three-room apartment behind the altar of the Congregation of Notre-Dame church (which she helped finance). She took perpetual vows of seclusion, chastity, and poverty in 1685/1695, practiced severe mortifications, embroidered vestments, supported the poor and perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, and became known as the “recluse of New France” or “Angel of Ville-Marie.” She retained an attendant (her cousin) and managed some property. Buried beside her father.

Generation 1

François Leber (Le Ber / Lebert) (c. 1626–1694). Brother of Jacques; arrived around the same time. First marriage produced daughter Anne; second marriage (2 December 1662, Montreal) to Jeanne Testard (c. 1642–1723), daughter of Jean Testard (dit Lafontaine) and Anne Godefroy (linked to the Godefroy de Linctot and de Normanville interpreters associated with Champlain’s circle). The family lived first at Pointe-Saint-Charles (property later sold to Marguerite Bourgeoys and the Congrégation), then moved to La Prairie. François appears in the 1681 census with arms and cultivated land; he and his sons were active as coureurs des bois / voyageurs (documented engagements to the Ottawa country, e.g., 1688). He died in La Prairie. 

Children with Jeanne Testard included Joachim Jacques (1664–1695, voyageur, engagements to the Ottawas and Michilimackinac, captured and interrogated at Albany in 1692), Marie (see below), François (1673–1746, also a voyageur), and others.

Generation 2

Marie Le Ber (1666–1756). Daughter of François and Jeanne Testard. Married (1) Charles Robert dit Deslauriers (briefly); (2) François Bourassa (c. 1659–1708) on 4 July 1684 at Contrecœur/Chambly; (3) later Pierre Hervé. She lived a long life in La Prairie, managing the household and farm while her husband and sons pursued the fur trade. François Bourassa (dit La Ronde) (c. 1659–1708). From the Luçon area (Vendée/Poitou). Arrived in New France by the early 1680s. Married into the Le Ber network. Active as a voyageur/coureur des bois: engagements for western and Ottawa country trips (e.g., with René Legardeur, Joachim Leber, etc., in the late 1680s–1690s); associated with the Compagnie du Nord (Hudson Bay ventures). Family tradition and secondary accounts note a prolonged absence (possibly capture or delay by Iroquois hostilities) after which he was presumed dead before returning. He held land concessions in La Prairie and died during a 1708 epidemic. His sons continued and expanded the trade. 

Sons: René Bourassa dit La Ronde (1688–1778) — the most documented. Fined for illicit trade with Albany (1722); partnered for pays d’en haut expeditions (Green Bay, Michilimackinac, La Vérendrye posts). In June 1736, captured by Prairie Sioux near Michilimackinac; prepared for burning at the stake until his Sioux slave girl successfully pleaded for his life (the same party later ambushed and killed Jean-Baptiste de La Vérendrye’s group). Wintered at western posts; later settled at Michilimackinac with family and slaves, becoming a prominent local trader before returning to Montreal. Other sons François Joachim and Antoine were also voyageurs/fur traders.

Generation 3

Marie Élisabeth Bourassa (1695–1766). Daughter of François Bourassa and Marie Le Ber. Married Jean dit Jacques Pinsonneault (Pinsonneau) dit Lafleur (c. 1682–1773) on 21 July 1712 in La Prairie. Jacques was the son of François Pinsonneau dit Lafleur (c. 1646–1731), a Carignan-Salières Regiment soldier (Saint-Ours company, arrived 1665 on La Justice), and Anne Leber (a fille du roi). The couple raised a large family in La Prairie; descendants continued mixed farming and fur-trade engagements.

Generations 4–5

Joseph Pinsonneau (Pinsono / dit Lafleur) (1733–1799). Son of Jacques and Marie Élisabeth. Married Marie Madeleine Duquet (daughter of Étienne Duquet dit Desrochers, a canoe builder, and Marie Françoise Deneau). Documented 29 April 1763 engagement in Montreal as a voyageur for Michel (or Jacques) Lasselle, bound for the Detroit trade. Lived and died in the Longueuil/La Prairie area. 

Gabriel Pinsonneau (Pinsono / dit Lafleur) (1770–1807). Son of Joseph and Marie Madeleine. Married Marie Louise Vielle (whose father Michel Vielle dit Cossé served in the Régiment de La Reine). Documented 1797 engagement as a voyageur for a Detroit run. Father of Gabriel (Gilbert) Passino/Pinsonneau (1803–1877), who continued the voyageur tradition into the early 19th century (later American records sometimes anglicize the name). 

These lines intermarried with other La Prairie fur-trade and military families (Cusson, Deneau, Duquet, Godefroy connections, Le Moyne network). La Prairie’s location on the Richelieu corridor and proximity to Montreal made it ideal for outfitting brigades heading west via the Ottawa River or Great Lakes while remaining vulnerable to Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) raids during the Beaver Wars and later Anglo-French conflicts.

Pelts of Empire — The Movie Treatment

Picture this as the opening sequence of a sweeping historical epic—think The Revenant meets Empire of the Sun with the dynastic intrigue of The Godfather and the spiritual intensity of The Mission, all set against the glittering, deadly beauty of the northern rivers.

Fade in: Normandy, mid-17th century. Cloth and ambition in the markets of Rouen. Robert LeBer’s sons stare at maps of a New World that promises beaver gold and certain death. François and Jacques cross the Atlantic into a colony bleeding from Iroquois raids. Montreal is a stockaded outpost of faith and commerce. Jacques marries into the Le Moyne powerhouse—the Canadian nobility in the making—and with his brother-in-law builds the stone trading post at Lachine that commands the gateway to the interior. Pelts flow east; silver and brandy flow west. Jacques becomes one of the richest men in New France, ennobled by a king desperate for cash, while his daughter Jeanne locks herself away in a cell behind the altar, praying through the nights as war parties slip through the woods outside. The “Angel of Ville-Marie” and the merchant prince—two poles of the same fierce will.

Across the river at La Prairie, François Leber clears land with one hand and signs voyageur contracts with the other. His daughter Marie marries the hard-driving François Bourassa. The young couple’s life is a rhythm of plantings, births, and long absences. Bourassa disappears into the pays d’en haut; months stretch into years; Marie is told he is dead. Then one day a gaunt figure steps from a canoe—scarred, changed, alive. Their sons inherit the hunger. René Bourassa paddles farther than almost anyone: Green Bay, the La Vérendrye posts, the edge of the known map. In 1736 a hundred Sioux warriors seize him. The stake is prepared. The fire is lit. His own slave girl throws herself forward and begs for his life. He walks free; the party behind him is annihilated. He returns to Michilimackinac, builds a house inside the fort, owns slaves and meadows, and watches empires change hands.

The bloodline flows into the Pinsonneaus—descendants of a Carignan soldier who fought the same Iroquois wars a generation earlier and a fille du roi. Joseph signs on for Detroit in 1763 as the British take control. Gabriel follows in 1797. Generation after generation of engagés load the great canoes at Lachine, sing the old paddling songs, portage around the roaring rapids, winter in the snow with Indigenous allies and rivals, and come home—or do not—to the farms at La Prairie.

Through it all runs the same thread: family networks tighter than any company charter, the constant gamble of river and forest, the collision of faith and profit, French and Indigenous worlds, and the quiet women who held the farms and the ledgers while the men vanished into the mist. Raids burn the fields. Epidemics empty the cradles. Empires rise and fall. The canoes keep leaving.

This is not one hero’s journey. It is a multi-generational saga of survival, ambition, and improbable return—the founding of a commercial empire on the edge of the wilderness, a mystic recluse whose prayers were said to turn back fleets, a trader who stared death in the face and was saved by the voice of a captive girl, and the ordinary-extraordinary voyageurs who carried the trade west until the maps finally closed. A Hollywood writer would see the set pieces immediately: the construction of the Lachine post, Jeanne’s irrevocable enclosure behind the altar, Bourassa’s reappearance from the dead, the Sioux stake and the desperate plea, the 1763 engagement signed under a new flag, the final Detroit runs as the old French world dissolves.

The rivers are still there. The stories are still waiting.