Voyageur’s Blog
Ask a voyageur a question
Here’s a blog to answer your questions, like what was life like during the 1800s in French Canada? Like who could or couldn’t be a voyageur? How big the canoes were? What trade goods they carried? What different furs were worth? What they used for medicine? I’ll answer these and more in the “A Voyageur’s Life” blog. Click on the button below to ask your question or go to the “Contact” section of this site — I’ll find the answers.
What happens when voyageurs met Quakers?
In her novel “Voyageurs,” Margaret Elphinstone weaves a story that places an English Quaker on a fur trade canoe brigade in order to search for his missing sister. Dissimilar groups with opposing agendas always make for great reading.
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How to find ancestors who paddled on voyageur brigades—easily
Want to see if you have voyageurs in your family ancestry? This website extracts information from 35,000 contracts; another one provides the actual contract and translates it into English. Addictive.
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Who’s the ‘Patroness of Voyageurs’ — Ste. Anne or Ste. Anne de Beaupre?
Official sources mention Ste. Anne as the patroness of many groups but don’t list voyageurs among them. Only fur trade journals tell that story. To get the more complex answer, you’ll have to read between the lines.
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Is it true that Ste. Anne is ‘patroness of voyageurs’?
Ste. Anne has been called the patroness of voyageurs, and fur trade journals and histories back that up. The canoe brigades of both Peter Pond and John Macdonnell stopped at Ste. Anne Church to ask prayers for a successful voyage.
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Hear French-Canadian the way voyageurs spoke it!
This French glossary helps readers to remember the words that the fur traders would have used in daily life. And the sound links make doubly handy—readers can listen to the sounds of French-Canadian.
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One Great Read about Red Voyageur Sashes
The story of the signature piece of voyageur clothing is recounted in a children’s book, “The Red Sash” by Jean Pendziwol. Just as fun is that she’s a relative, and her son Colin is pictured on the cover of my first novel, “Waters Like the Sky.”
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