Date Published:
Revised 2013

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

Pierre Boucher

(1622-1717)

Boucher, Pierre (1622-1717), governor of Three Rivers, was born in France in 1622, and came to Canada with his father in 1635. He spent four years in the country of the Hurons learning several Indian languages, and on his return to Quebec became interpreter in the garrison, and took part in various expeditions against the Iroquois. In 1645 he settled at Three Rivers, where he became chief interpreter, and for nearly a quarter of a century he served there in various capacities, civil and military. In 1652 he became governor of Three Rivers, and he filled this office, with short intervals, until 1667. In 1661 he was sent to France to obtain rein­forcements, was received by Louis XIV, and given a patent of nobility, and returned to Quebec with a number of colonists. Although he was not an educated man, he wrote at this period a work entitled Histoire véritable et naturelle des mœurs et des productions de la Nouvelle France, which has remained an authority, and which has been four times reprinted since its first publication in Paris, in 1664. In 1667, as a reward for saving Three Rivers from an attack of the Iroquois, he was granted the seigniory of Boucherville, whither he retired to spend the rest of his life. He died there on April 19, 1717. He married first, in 1649, Marie Chres­tienne, a Huron girl, and second, on July 9, 1652, Jeanne Crevier, by whom he had fifteen children.

See S. Marion, Un pionnier Canadien (Quebec, 1927) ; Laure Conan, Pierre Boucher (Revue Canadienne, 1913), and B. Suite, Pierre Boucher et son livre (Trans. Roy. Soc. Can., 1896-7).

Source: W Stewart WALLACE, ed., The Encyclopedia of Canada, Vol. 1, Toronto, University Associates of Canada, 1848, 398p., p. 261