Page 4 - Fortier Family History

Foreword This “first draft” of the “Fortier History” has actually been in the making for the past 25 years or so. Like all family histories, it is a work in progress, subject to corrections and additions as they surface. To factually support this history I have relied on documents from the Canadian Archives, Manitoba Archives, Ontario Archives, Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, the Drouin Genealogical Institute’s online Quebec Genealogy database (now in English!), as well as bits and pieces of information I have collected from books and the internet over the years. I have also relied heavily on family oral history to fill in the gaps of the undocumented history. Of course this opens up the possibility that “stories” and “remembrances” may be “factually tainted” because they are always filtered through the memory and biases of the storyteller so please keep that in mind when reading our history. I have tried to balance the factual records with the oral histories from family members as much as possible. Because our family has a strong Indigenous link in Canada, the scarcity of written records for births, marriages, and deaths along that line requires the reliance on oral family history more so than on our French Canadian sides (Fortier and Bigaouette). The French Catholic Parishes kept meticulous records from almost the beginning of “New France” in the 16th century. If not for the marriages, official and “unofficial” between our Scottish ancestor Nicol Finlayson and his Native “country wives” while in the service of the HBC, most of our Native branch would be a mystery today. In the course of researching and compiling all this information I have met (online in most cases) many descendants of our common French, Scottish and Native (Cree, Oji-Cree, Ojibway, Métis) ancestors. We have Finlayson relations as far as Australia and of course scattered across Canada now. In the early 2000s I received an email from William Lees, the descendant of Nicol’s mixed-blood daughter Mary Finlayson Lamb. William lived in London and provided a tremendous boost to my Finlayson origin branch from several small parishes in Ross Shire, located in the eastern Scottish Highlands. Last July, while in Victoria I met the g-g-g-granddaughter of Roderick Finlayson, nephew of our Nicol Finlayson ancestor and co-founder of Fort Victoria for the HBC. I have spoken on the phone with Native/Métis Finlaysons from Prince Albert, Sask., and I have traded information and photos with Native/Métis Finlayson descendants in Manitoba and from Dryden and Kenora, Ontario. In the 2010s the popularity of genealogy websites such as familysearch.com, ancestry.com and myheritage.com paved the way to access more records and reach out to other descendants through their online family trees. My current family tree on myheritage.com has over 2300 individuals spanning from the 1500s to 2019. The primary surnames are: Fortier, Finlayson, Bigaouette, Larue, Boulet, Michano, Souliere, Bourdages, and Bujold. Secondary surnames include Desmoulin (various spellings), Prévost (also spelled Provost), Pouliot, Chamberland (French version), Benoit, and others. We crossed paths with Leclerc, Mercier, Dostie, Guay, Lemoyne, Guindon, Quenneville, Pelchat, Lapage, Fluery, Royer, Couture, Charrier, Boissonneau, Gagnon, Onabigan, Etchum, Schellin, Lees, MacKenzie, Bird, Smith, Cameron, Kennedy, and Sir George Simpson himself. We were adventurers, explorers, fishermen, artisans, clerks, fur traders, voyagers, farmers, Chief Factors, and Indian Chiefs. We had large families and small, rich and poor. We were white, “red” and mixed. We were uneducated and highly educated, and we lived just briefly in some cases and into our 90s and 100s in others. We lived in some form of the country now known as Canada from the very beginning, and we fought in its wars and made babies during the peace. Our “Fortier” story truly is a Canadian story.