• Aboriginals in North America
  • Beast Literature
  • Canadiana.1
  • Dances & Music
  • Fables and Fairy Tales
  • Fables by Jean de La Fontaine
  • Feasts & Liturgy
  • Great Books Online
  • La Princesse de Clèves
  • Middle East
  • Molière
  • Nominations
  • Posts on Love Celebrated
  • Posts on the United States
  • The Art and Music of Russia
  • The French Revolution & Napoleon Bonaparte
  • Ukraine
  • Voyageurs Posts
  • Canadiana.2

Micheline's Blog

~ Art, music, books, history & current events

Micheline's Blog

Tag Archives: Simon McTavish

Scots in Canada, cont’d

30 Sunday May 2021

Posted by michelinewalker in Canadian History, Fur Trade, Quebec

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Denis Monière, Fur traders, Idéologie de la collaboration, James McGill, Montreal, Simon McTavish, The Beaver Club, The Château Clique, the Golden Square Mile. Assimilation, the North West Company

Ravenscrag, built for Sir Hugh Allan in 1863 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Saga continues…

Although France and Scotland had joined forces under the Auld Alliance, the relationship between the French in Canada and Canadians of Scottish descent could not be as cordial as the bonds uniting France and Scotland. The French in Canada were a conquered nation. They had lost the battle. But let us look at the Scots.

The Fur Trade

  • Scots as Fur Traders
  • the North West Company
  • Montreal as centre of the fur trade in Canada

It is as fur traders that the Scots in Canada gained prominence.

The North West Company, founded in 1779, was a Montreal-based Company that competed with the Hudson’s Bay Company, chartered in 1670. Most partners, or shareholders, were Scots. They had mansions built in Montreal’s Golden Square Mile. Sir Hugh Allan, a shipping magnate, whose mansion is shown at the top of this post, was not associated with the North West Company. He brought immigrants to Canada and lived at Ravenscrag, located in Montreal’s Golden Square Mile. Ravenscrag was donated to McGill University in 1940. In fact, James McGill endowed McGill University in his will. Nor’Westers later moved to Westmount, in Montreal. They socialized at the Beaver Club, a Gentleman’s Club, founded in 1785. French-Canadians who had remained in the fur trade after New France fell to England were senior members at the Beaver Club (see Beaver Club, Wikipedia).

The most prosperous shareholders of the North West Company were not French-speaking Canadians. In the first half of the 19th century, very few, if any, French-speaking Canadians lived in the Golden Square Mile or Westmount, except the French-Canadian wives of fur traders. James McGill (1744-1813) married Charlotte Trottier Desrivières, née Guillimin, a widow, and Simon McTavish (1750-1804) married Marguerite Chaboillez, but these marriages did not reflect a political choice. Partners were Englishmen and English Canadians. Benjamin Frobisher (1742-1787) was English and Joseph Frobisher (1748-1810) was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He was an English Canadian. The main shareholders of the North West Company (la Compagnie du Nord-Ouest), were Scots.

The Château Clique

  • James McGill & the Quebec Act
  • Guy Carleton’s Quebec Act revisited
  • the assimilation of the French through Union Acts
  • the abolition of Seigneuries, achieved in 1854
  • responsible government
  • idéologie de la collaboration

Several North West Company shareholders or partners were members of Lower Canada’s Château Clique. La Clique du Château was un Parti bureaucrate, a bureaucracy, also known as the British Party or the Tory Party. The Château Clique had its counterpart in Upper Canada, called the Family Compact. A few Seigneurs and French-speaking Canadians were members of the Château Clique. Denis Monière refers to an idéologie de la collaboration. The French who were not returning to France were cutting their personal losses. So was the Clergy.

Il faut dire aussi que les rapports entre ces deux groupes sont facilités par une origine de classe identique.

Denis Monière [1]

[One must also say that the relationship between these two groups is made easier because they originate from identical classes.]

So, how could these threatened classes oppose strongly and visibly a group promoting the assimilation of French-speaking Canadians (union acts) and frowned upon a responsible government. One suspects that many saw clear and present danger, and went into hiding. In fact, James McGill (1744-1813) opposed the Quebec Act of 1774. (See James McGill, Dictionary of Canadian Biography.) The Quebec Act can be viewed as a wish to protect the British in Canada from an alliance between the defeated French and the rebellious colonies to the south. But it may also have earned Guy Carleton and the British in Canada decades of peaceful coexistence in the country Guy Carleton had governed. The Quebec Act was conciliatory. French-speaking Canadians were allowed to keep their language, their religion, their Seigneuries and their Code civil. Although the dreaded Act of Union was passed in 1840, it failed to assimilate French Canadians. There was compatibility between French-speaking and English-speaking Canadians.

The North West Company consisted of a few privileged Englishmen and several privileged Scots. Benjamin Frobisher, Joseph Frobisher, James McGill, Simon McTavish, Robert Grant, Nicholas Montour, Patrick Small, William Holmes, George McBeath. Alexander Ross, would join North West Company and so would David Thompson, who was not a Scot and would not be a fur trader. David Thomson is one of the finest cartographers in history.

Other Scots, the landless crofters, found homes in Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk‘s Red River Settlement. Crofters also settled in Nova Scotia and elsewhere in Canada. The Red River Settlement is inextricably linked to the fur trade. The competition between the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company led to the Seven Oaks Massacre (1816) and to the merger of the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company (1821).

Unknown Artist, Indien et Habitant avec Traîneau [Indian and Inhabitant with a Tobogan] (Quebec City) around 1840. (The Exodus: railroads, land, and factories, Related Articles, below)

Conclusion

  • successful Scots
  • Montreal as fur-trade capital in Canada
  • a conquered people
  • the Seigneurial system is abolished

In short, after the Conquest, Montreal became the centre of the fur trade in Canada. Scots were the main shareholders of the North West Company, but the fur trade declined for lack of beavers. Canada’s voyageurs and Amerindians would then become the explorers’ guides. These were mostly Scots. and all wanted to find a passage to the Pacific, by land.

The story of the fur trade chronicles an early chapter in Canadian history, the years following the defeat of France. Nouvelle-France was ceded to Britain in 1763. English-speaking immigrants were brought to Canada and United Empire Loyalists were given land in the Eastern Townships. Yet, in 1854, when the Seigneurial System was abolished, habitants who could not afford their thirty acres had to pay rente perpetually. The French had been conquered.

On 26 August 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville visited a tribunal and said afterwards:

Je n’ai jamais été plus convaincu qu’en sortant [de ce tribunal] que le plus grand et le plus irrémédiable malheur pour un peuple c’est d’être conquis.

See Alexis de Tocqueville on Lower Canada (1 January 2014 )

“I have never been more convinced than after I left the courthouse that the greatest and most irreversible tragedy for a people is to be conquered.” (See Alexis de Tocqueville on Lower Canada, 1 January 2014)

RELATED ARTICLES

  • Alexis de Tocqueville and John Neilson: a Conversation, 27 August 1831 (13 May 2021)
  • Alexis de Tocqueville & John Neilson (13 May 2021)
  • L’Exode told: Trente Arpents (10 May 2021)
  • The Exodus: railroads, land, and factories (6 May 2021)
  • Alexis de Tocqueville on Lower Canada (1 January 2014)
  • Canadiana, 1 (Page)

______________________________
[1] Denis Monière, Le Développement des idéologies au Québec (Montréal: Québec / Amérique, 1977), p. 91.

—ooo—

Love to everyone 💕

Celtic Music from Brittany by Arany Zoltán
Alexis de Tocqueville, Portrait by Théodore Chassériau (1850), at the Palace of Versailles

© Micheline Walker
29 May 2021
WordPress

Micheline's Blog

  • Print
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest

Like this:

Like Loading...

The Voyageurs & their Employers

24 Saturday Mar 2018

Posted by michelinewalker in Canada, First Nations, Fur Trade, Voyageurs

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Benjamin and Joseph Frosbisher, Hudson's Bay Company, Médard Chouart des Groseillers, North West Company, Pierre-Esprit Radisson, Prince Rupert of the Rhine, Robert Semple, Simon McTavish, the Battle of Seven Oaks, the bourgeois

hbc-upper_savage_islands-hudson_strait2

Hudson’s Bay Company Ships
Prince of Wales and Eddystone bartering with the Inuit off the Upper Savage Islands, Hudson Strait, NWT. Watercolour by Robert Hood (courtesy Library and Archives Canada/C-40364) (Photo credit: The Canadian Encyclopedia)

The Hudson’s Bay Company ships Prince of Wales and Eddystone bartering with the Inuit off the Upper Savage Islands, Hudson Strait by Robert Hood (1819) (Hudson Strait, Wikipedia)

The French Régime

During the French régime, the voyageurs or canoemen who travelled to the heart of the continent to collect beaver pelts were hired by a “bourgeois” who used the selection criteria I listed in my last post:

  • short legs,
  • a powerful upper body, and
  • a good singing voice.

The Hudson’s Bay Company

Matters changed when Pierre-Esprit Radisson (1636–1710) and his brother-in-law, Médard Chouart des Groseilliers (1618–1696), discovered the sea we now know as the Hudson’s Bay. They collected enough beaver pelts to fill a hundred canoes. Having done so, they travelled to Canada which, at that point in history, was the western part of Nouvelle-France. The eastern part was l’Acadie, comprising Maine, part of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

Radisson and Groseilliers thought that officials in Canada would be interested in their discovery: one could harvest the coveted pelts travelling by boat, large boats. Officials confiscated the fur Radisson and Des Groseilliers had brought back. It was proof of their discovery. They were treated like coureurs des bois, mere adventurers, not to say criminals.

Rupert of the Rhine

Prince Rupert of the Rhine (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Radisson being very shrewd, he and Des Groseilliers went to Boston to seek the help  they required to travel to England. The Bostonians agreed to take them to England where a member of the royal family, Prince Rupert of the Rhine (17 December 1619 – 29 November 1682), took an interest in the findings of the two explorers. He financed a trip to the Hudson’s Bay. The first ships to venture to what would be Rupert’s Land were the Eaglet and the Nonsuch that left England on June 3, 1668. The Company was chartered on 2 May 1670. That is how the Hudson’s Bay Company was established.

According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC)

is the oldest incorporated joint-stock merchandising company in the English-speaking world.[I]

Rupert's Land showing York Factory

Rupert’s Land showing York Factory (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The British Régime

Under the terms of the Treaty of Paris, signed on February 10, 1763 by France, Britain and Spain, France relinquished its claim on its two provinces of New France. The Treaty of Paris ended the Seven Years’ War, an international conflict.

The North West Company

After New France became a British Colony, a second Fur Company was founded, the North West Company, and it established its headquarters in Montreal. The most prominent figures in the newly-founded company were Benjamin Frobisher, his brother Joseph, and Simon McTavish.

The Fight at Seven Oaks (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

(please click on the picture to enlarge it)

The North West Company competed with the Hudson’s Bay Company from 1779 to 1821, when a merger was negotiated. The conflict between the two companies reached an apex on 19 June 1816 when Robert Semple, Governor-in-Chief of Rupert’s Land challenged a party of Métis at Seven Oaks. The Métis were allies of the North West Company. Semple and 20 of his men were killed.

The Merger

This event served as a catalyst in the merger of the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company. After the merger, the man in charge, was the immensely capable and pleasant Sir George Simpson (1787 – September 7,  1860), a Scots-Quebecer. Sir George Simpson was Governor-in-Chief of Rupert’s Land and administrator over the Northwest Territories and in British North America (now Canada) from 1821 to 1860. He was knighted by Queen Victoria.

To sum up, let us simply say that we had voyageurs working for

  • a “bourgeois,”
  • The Hudson’s Bay Company (1670 – ),
  • The North West Company, revived in 1990, but not a fur-trading company,
  • a merger (1821-1860; end of the fur trade).

However, by 1821, only one company remained: the Hudson’s Bay Company.

York boats were used by the Hudson’s Bay Company to transport furs in the Northwest. The sails could be used in open water. (Canadian Encyclopedia)

______________________________

[i] written by ARTHUR J. RAY, reviewed by SASHA YUSUFALI , accessed on January 12, 2012.  <http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/hudsons-bay-company>

[ii] written by CORNELIUS J. JAENEN, accessed on January 12, 2012.  <http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/treaty-of-paris-1763>

—ooo—

Arne Dørumsgaard, arr.
Frederica von Stade (1945- ) sings early French songs (3), (Edinburgh, 1976)
 
 
 

© Micheline Walker
13 January 2012
WordPress

Micheline's Blog

  • Print
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest

Like this:

Like Loading...

The Voyageurs & their Employers

13 Friday Jan 2012

Posted by michelinewalker in Canada, First Nations, Fur Trade, Voyageurs

≈ 86 Comments

Tags

Benjamin and Joseph Frosbisher, Hudson's Bay Company, Médard Chouart des Groseillers, North West Company, Pierre-Esprit Radisson, Simon McTavish, Sir George Simpson, the bourgeois

hbc-upper_savage_islands-hudson_strait2

Hudson’s Bay Company Ships
Prince of Wales and Eddystone bartering with the Inuit off the Upper Savage Islands, Hudson Strait, NWT. Watercolour by Robert Hood (courtesy Library and Archives Canada/C-40364) (Photo credit: The Canadian Encyclopedia)

The Hudson’s Bay Company ships Prince of Wales and Eddystone bartering with the Inuit off the Upper Savage Islands, Hudson Strait by Robert Hood (1819) (Hudson Strait, Wikipedia)

The French Régime

During the French régime, the voyageurs or canoemen who travelled to the heart of the continent to collect beaver pelts were hired by a “bourgeois” who used the selection criteria I listed in my last blog:

  • short legs,
  • a powerful upper body, and
  • a good singing voice.

The Hudson’s Bay Company

Matters changed when Pierre-Esprit Radisson (1636–1710) and his brother-in-law, Médard Chouart des Groseilliers (1618–1696), discovered what we now know as the Hudson’s Bay. They collected enough beaver pelts to fill a hundred canoes. Having done so, they travelled to Canada which, at that point in history, was the western part of Nouvelle-France. The eastern part was l’Acadie, comprising Maine, part of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

Radisson and Groseilliers thought that officials in Canada would be interested in their discovery: one could harvest the coveted pelts travelling by boat, large boats. Officials confiscated the fur Radisson and Des Groseilliers had brought back. It was proof of their discovery. They were treated like coureurs des bois, mere adventurers, not to say criminals.

Rupert of the Rhine

Prince Rupert of the Rhine (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Radisson being very shrewd, he and Des Groseilliers went to Boston to seek the help they required to travel to England. The Bostonians agreed to take them to England where a member of the royal family, Prince Rupert of the Rhine (17 December 1619 – 29 November 1682), took an interest in the findings of the two explorers. He financed a trip to the Hudson’s Bay. The first ships to venture to what would be Rupert’s Land were the Eaglet and the Nonsuch that left England on June 3, 1668. The Company was chartered on May 2, 1670. That is how the Hudson’s Bay Company was established.

According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC)

is the oldest incorporated joint-stock merchandising company in the English-speaking world.[I]

Rupert's Land showing York Factory

Rupert’s Land showing York Factory (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The British Régime

Under the terms of the Treaty of Paris, signed on February 10, 1763 by France, Britain and Spain, France relinquished its claim on its two provinces of New France. The Treaty of Paris ended the Seven Years’ War, an international conflict.

The North West Company

After New France became a British Colony, a second Fur Company was founded, the North West Company, and it established its headquarters in Montreal. The most prominent figures in the newly-founded company were Benjamin Frobisher, his brother Joseph, and Simon McTavish.

The Fight at Seven Oaks (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

(please click on the picture to enlarge it)

The North West Company competed with the Hudson’s Bay Company from 1779 to 1821, when a merger was negotiated. The conflict between the two companies reached an apex on June 19, 1816 when Robert Semple, Governor-in-Chief of Rupert’s Land challenged a party of Métis at Seven Oaks. The Métis were allies of the North West Company. Semple and 20 of his men were killed.

The Merger

This event served as a catalyst in the merger of the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company. After the merger, the man in charge, was the immensely capable and pleasant Sir George Simpson (1787 – September 7,  1860), a Scots-Quebecer. Sir George Simpson was Governor-in-Chief of Rupert’s Land and administrator over the Northwest Territories and in British North America (now Canada) from 1821 to 1860. He was knighted by Queen Victoria.

To sum up, let us simply say that we had voyageurs working for

  • a “bourgeois,”
  • The Hudson’s Bay Company (1670 – ),
  • The North West Company, revived in 1990, but not a fur-trading company,
  • a merger (1821-1860; end of the fur trade).

However, by 1821, only one company remained: the Hudson’s Bay Company.

York boats were used by the Hudson’s Bay Company to transport furs in the Northwest. The sails could be used in open water. (Canadian Encyclopedia)

______________________________

[i] written by ARTHUR J. RAY, reviewed by SASHA YUSUFALI , accessed on January 12, 2012.  <http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/hudsons-bay-company>

[ii] written by CORNELIUS J. JAENEN, accessed on January 12, 2012. < http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/treaty-of-paris-1763>

—ooo—

Arne Dørumsgaard, arr.
Frederica von Stade (1945- ) sings early French songs (3), (Edinburgh, 1976)
 
 
 

© Micheline Walker
13 January 2012
WordPress

Micheline's Blog

  • Print
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest

Like this:

Like Loading...

Europa

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 2,469 other followers

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Categories

Recent Posts

  • The Decline of Kievan Rus’
  • Ilya Repin, Ivan IV and his son Ivan on 16 November 1581, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
  • Ukraine’s Varangian Princes, its Primary Chronicle, the Russkaya Pravda …
  • Bohdan Khmelnytsky, a Cossack Hetman
  • Ruthenia vs Ukraine
  • Ukraine: … a Genocide?
  • A Brief Disappearance
  • Ukraine: the Battle of Poltava
  • The War in Ukraine: la petite Russie
  • The Art and Music of Russia

Archives

Calendar

May 2022
M T W T F S S
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
3031  
« Apr    

Social

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • WordPress.org

micheline.walker@videotron.ca

Micheline Walker

Micheline Walker

Social

Social

  • View belaud44’s profile on Facebook
  • View Follow @mouchette_02’s profile on Twitter
  • View Micheline Walker’s profile on LinkedIn
  • View belaud44’s profile on YouTube
  • View Miicheline Walker’s profile on Google+
  • View michelinewalker’s profile on WordPress.org

Micheline Walker

Micheline Walker
Follow Micheline's Blog on WordPress.com

A WordPress.com Website.

  • Follow Following
    • Micheline's Blog
    • Join 2,469 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Micheline's Blog
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: