Date Published:
February 2005

L’Encyclopédie de l’histoire du Québec / The Quebec History Encyclopedia

François Dollier de Casson

Dollier de Casson, François (1636-1701), priest and explorer, was born in the Château de Casson, near Nantes, in 1636. He became a soldier, and before the age of twenty was a cavalry captain under Turenne. In 1657 he entered the seminary of Saint-Sulpice at Paris ; and he came to Canada to engage in missionary work in 1666. In 1669 he was sent with Galinée to try to reach the Mississippi, in order to pave the way for Sulpician missions among the western tribes. The two priests spent the winter of 1669-70 on the northern shore of lake Erie, where they took possession of the country in the name of Louis XIV. In the spring of 1670 they proceeded to Sault Ste. Marie, and thence they returned to the St. Lawrence. In the autumn of 1671, Dollier de Casson became superior of the seminary of Montreal, and later he was vicar-general of the diocese of Quebec. He died on September 25, 1701, leaving an Histoire du Montréal covering the years 1640-72, and this was published by the Société Historique de Montreal in 1868, and also by the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec in its third series of Historical Documents (Quebec, 1871), and has been translated and annotated by R. Flenley (Toronto, 1928). See O. Maurault, Dollier de Casson (Revue Trimestrielle Canadienne, 1919).

Source: W. Stewart WALLACE, ed., The Encyclopedia of Canada, Vol. II, Toronto, University Associates of Canada, 1948, 411p., pp. 220-221.