Ripples from La Prairie Voyageur Canoes: CHAPTER 2: THE STAGING GROUND AT LA PRAIRIE & THE LACHINE MONOPOLY (1626

SECTION I: THE TWO BROTHERS OF ROUEN & THE DOUBLE-CAVELIER DYNASTY

As the fur trade evolved from seasonal wilderness barter into a multi-million-livre transatlantic industry, the focus of power in New France shifted inexorably upriver toward the Island of Montréal. Sitting at the confluence of the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers, Montréal was the geographic hinge of North America—the ultimate crossroads where deep-water ocean vessels met the shallow, fast-running inland canoe routes.

Into this bustling river world came two brothers from Rouen, Normandy, who represented two complementary pillars of French colonial expansion: François Leber (1626–1694) and his younger brother, Jacques Leber dit Larose (1633–1706).

THE DOUBLE-CAVELIER DYNASTIC MERGER

Cavelier Merchant House of Rouen

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┌───────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────┐

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Perrette Cavelier (1593–1636) Colette Cavelier (1605–1694)

m. Pierre Godefroy de Linctot m. Robert LeBer (1601–1651)

│ │

Anne Godefroy de Linctot François Leber (1626–1694)

m. Sieur Jean Testard de La Fontaine [Pioneer Voyageur of La Prairie]

│ │

Jeanne Testard de Laforest (1642–1723) ◄───────────────────────┘

(m. 1662 at Montréal)

│

MARIE LE BER (1666–1756)

m. François Bourassa (1659–1708)

[Founders of the Fur Trade Dynasty]

Raised in Normandy under the shadow of Rouen’s ancient merchant guilds, the Leber brothers were the sons of Robert LeBer (1601–1651) and Colette Cavelier (1605–1694).

This parentage reveals an extraordinary genealogical reality: through Colette Cavelier, the Leber brothers were closely bound to the same elite Cavelier merchant dynasty of Rouen that produced Perrette Cavelier (wife of Pierre Godefroy) and the legendary Mississippi River explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle (1643–1687).

When François Leber later crossed the Atlantic and married Jeanne Testard de Laforest—granddaughter of Perrette Cavelier—the union created a potent Double-Cavelier merger in our family tree. Their daughter, Marie Le Ber, inherited a double measure of Norman mercantile ambition, wilderness diplomacy, and river-navigating drive.

When Jacques Leber arrived in Montréal in 1657, he possessed little more than a keen mind for numbers, an iron will, and a deep understanding of Norman merchant networks. He recognized that while the coureurs des bois faced freezing rivers and native war parties to gather beaver pelts, the true long-term wealth of the fur trade lay in the hands of the merchants who financed the outfits, held the warehouses, and dictated the terms of credit.

His older brother, François Leber, arrived with a different calling. Rather than surrounding himself with ledger books and stone shopfronts, François looked across the wide, silt-heavy waters of the St. Lawrence toward the south shore—a vast, forested wilderness known as La Prairie-de-la-Madeleine. François understood that without agricultural depth, timber, and a secure mainland staging ground, no commercial empire in Montréal could survive the ruthless frontier wars.

Together, the two brothers forged an informal family alliance that spanned both banks of the river: Jacques mastering the high-finance merchant monopoly at Lachine, while François carved out the physical, agricultural, and defensive staging ground at La Prairie.

SECTION II: LACHINE — THE STONE FORTRESS & THE MERCHANT EMPIRE

By the 1660s, Jacques Leber dit Larose had established himself as one of the preeminent commercial figures in New France. To secure his position at the top of the colonial hierarchy, Jacques executed a brilliant dynastic marriage in 1658, marrying Jeanne Le Moyne (1636–1682), the sister of Charles Le Moyne de Longueuil et de Chateauguay (1626–1685).

The partnership of Jacques Leber and Charles Le Moyne created an unstoppable commercial machine. Le Moyne provided military prestige, deep diplomatic relationships with Indigenous leaders, and extensive seigneurial landholdings, while Leber brought financial discipline, shipping arrangements with merchants in Rouen and La Rochelle, and sophisticated inventory management.

THE LACHINE COMMERCE HUB

[Rouen / La Rochelle] ──► Trade Goods (Axes, Kettles, Blankets, Powder)

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[Leber & Le Moyne Storehouses at Lachine]

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[Outbound Fleets] ◄── Canoes Equipped with Outfitters' Credit (*Engagements*)

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[Inbound Fleets] ──► Prime Beaver Pelts Packed for Transatlantic Export

Together, Leber and Le Moyne acquired prime riverfront property at the western tip of Montréal Island—a location named Lachine.

Lachine sat directly above the treacherous, foam-white Lachine Rapids (Sault Saint-Louis), the natural barrier that stopped ocean-going sailing ships in their tracks. It was the exact spot where every western expedition was forced to launch its canoes:

The Supply Depot: Leber constructed massive stone warehouses (magasins) along the shore, storing thousands of iron trade axes, brass kettles, wool blankets, glass beads, lead shot, and gunpowder imported from France.
The Outfitting Center: Every spring, hundreds of independent traders and engagés gathered at Lachine to negotiate credit agreements with Jacques Leber. Leber supplied the trade goods, food provisions, and canoes upfront on credit; in return, the rivermen pledged their entire season’s harvest of prime beaver, otter, and mink pelts at fixed interest rates.
The Defensive Bastion: Because Lachine was the gatehouse to Montréal, Jacques Leber built a fortified stone homestead complete with thick masonry walls, iron-barred windows, and gun ports capable of withstanding small-arms fire and incendiary arrows during the Iroquois Wars.

Through his financial acumen, Jacques Leber accumulated immense wealth. He bought shares in transatlantic merchant vessels, acquired seigniories across the colony, and was elevated to the French nobility when King Louis XIV issued him formal letters of knighted nobility (lettres de noblesse) in 1696 for his military service and contributions to the colony’s defense.

SECTION III: LA PRAIRIE-DE-LA-MADELEINE — THE MAINLAND STAGING GROUND

While Jacques Leber built his stone empire at Lachine, his brother François Leber was wrestling with a far more raw and dangerous wilderness across the river at La Prairie-de-la-Madeleine.

Granted to the Jesuit Order in 1647, La Prairie was a vast tract of low-lying fertile soil, marshland, and dense hardwood forest stretching along the south shore of the St. Lawrence. It occupied a location of immense geopolitical and logistical importance:

THE LA PRAIRIE GEOGRAPHIC CROSSROADS

[Ottawa River Route]

(To Upper Lakes)

▲

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[Montréal Island / Lachine] ◄──► [LA PRAIRIE] ◄──► [Richelieu River / Lake Champlain]

│ (To Hudson River & Albany)

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[St. Lawrence River Route]

(To Québec & Ocean)

The South Shore Terminal: La Prairie was the northern terminus of the ancient Indigenous trail leading down the Richelieu River valley to Lake Champlain, Lake George, and the Hudson River—the direct pipeline to Albany and the English colonies.
The Canoe Staging Area: While Lachine was the primary departure point for the Ottawa River route to the Upper Great Lakes, La Prairie was the staging ground where voyageur crews assembled, rested, re-rationed, and organized their fleets before heading south into the Iroquois borderlands or west across Lake Saint-Louis.
The Agricultural Engine: The rich alluvial soil of La Prairie was ideal for growing wheat, peas, corn, and oats—the essential food provisions (pemmican, dried peas, and hardtack) required to feed hundreds of rivermen on transcontinental journeys.

Before establishing his permanent family line with his second wife, François Leber first married Marguerite Lesieur (1628–1662) in 1655, with whom he had a daughter, Anne Leber (1656–1694). Following Marguerite's early death, François executed a dynastic union in 1662 at Montréal, marrying Jeanne Testard de Laforest (1642–1723).

Jeanne was the daughter of Sieur Jean Testard de La Fontaine and Anne Godefroy de Linctot. This marriage brought together the two branches of the Cavelier family network: François Leber (son of Colette Cavelier) joined with Jeanne Testard (granddaughter of Perrette Cavelier). It bound François’s landholdings directly to the noble wilderness pedigree, language fluency, and prestige of Champlain's elite truchements.

François and Jeanne established a fortified homestead at La Prairie, surrounded by palisades. Clearing the land was agonizing work. François and his sons felled giant oak and maple trees with broadaxes, dragged out stubborn stumps with oxen teams, and dug drainage ditches through the river clay.

Their household quickly grew into a bustling frontier anchor, welcoming a large family that included:

Joachim Jacques Leber (1664–1695): Who entered the river trade early before his untimely death.
Marie Le Ber (1666–1756): Our direct ancestor, who would marry François Bourassa and found the fur trade dynasty.
Jeanne Leber (1670–1688): Who lived her brief life at the La Prairie homestead.
François Leber (1673–1746): Who continued as a prominent landholder and riverman at La Prairie.
Claude Leber (1674–1674): Who died in infancy.

François Leber’s homestead became an essential haven for travelers, traders, and soldiers. During the bitter Iroquois raids of the 1670s and 1680s, when war parties slipped silently through the forests of the south shore, the Leber home served as a fortified redoubt where local families gathered behind timber walls to defend their lives with matchlocks and pike-axes.

On December 6, 1666, Jeanne Testard de Laforest gave birth at La Prairie to their daughter, Marie Le Ber.

Marie grew up on the exact frontier where wild rivermen met the soil, learning the survival discipline of her mother’s Godefroy heritage, the deep Cavelier family drive, and the practical economics of her father’s farm.

SECTION IV: DIVERGING SANCTUARIES — MARIE LE BER & JEANNE LEBER

Within the wider Leber family dynasty, the late 17th century produced two women of extraordinary willpower whose lives stood in dramatic contrast, symbolizing the two spiritual poles of New France.

Across the river in Montréal, Jacques Leber’s daughter—Jeanne Leber (1662–1714)—was born into unimaginable wealth. Goddaughter of the legendary pioneer Jeanne Mance, young Jeanne Leber had access to the finest silk dresses, silver plate, and social prestige in the colony.

TWO PATHS OF THE LEBER DYNASTY

Robert LeBer & Colette Cavelier

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┌─────────────────┴──────────────────────────┐

│ │

Jacques Leber dit Larose François Leber

└── Jeanne Leber (1662–1714) └── MARIE LE BER (1666–1756)

[The Secluded Recluse] [The River Matriarch]

• Chose total isolation behind altar • Chose open frontier at La Prairie

• Prayed for defense of New France • Married trader François Bourassa

• Financed churches with family fortune • Raised the "Fathers of the Fur Trade"

Yet Jeanne Leber rejected the material splendor of her father's merchant empire. Driven by intense religious devotion, she made a vow of absolute seclusion. In 1695, before an astonished congregation at the Chapel of Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours in Montréal, Jeanne surrendered her inheritance, dressed in coarse gray wool, and locked herself inside a small, unheated stone cell constructed directly behind the chapel altar.

For nearly twenty years, Jeanne Leber lived as a solemn recluse (l'Anachorète). She never stepped outside, never looked upon the faces of her family, and spoke only through a tiny sliding wooden grate to receive her daily bread and water. While her hands spun fine wool and embroidered altar cloths laced with gold thread, her prayers were sought by Governors, generals, and common settlers who believed her spiritual intercession protected Montréal from destruction.

While her cousin Jeanne retreated behind stone walls to fight a spiritual war, Marie Le Ber (1666–1756) chose the open sky, the wild current, and the physical struggle of the frontier at La Prairie.

Marie was not a recluse; she was a woman of action. She grew up watching heavy canoës de maître pull into the La Prairie mud, listening to the coarse laughter and rowing songs of the paddlers, and learning how to negotiate supply contracts, manage livestock, and run a complex frontier household.

When Marie Le Ber looked across the waters, she saw her future not in a quiet chapel cell, but in the eyes of a rugged fur trader from Luçon, France, who was making a name for himself along the Ottawa River supply lines: François Bourassa.

SECTION V: THE LACHINE MASSACRE & THE UNBROKEN FRONTIER (1689)

The true test of the Leber family's iron resilience came in the dark, rainy pre-dawn hours of August 5, 1689.

Under the cover of a torrential summer hail storm, a massive war party of over 1,500 Iroquois warriors crossed Lake Saint-Louis silently in war canoes, landing undetected on the shores of Lachine. Seeking vengeance for French military incursions into their homelands, the warriors launched a surprise attack against the unsuspecting settlement.

THE TERROR OF 1689 & THE RESILIENT LINE

August 5, 1689: 1,500 Iroquois Attack Lachine ──► Homesteads Burned & Settlement Devastated

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Jacques Leber's Stone Fortification Holds ──► Lachine Rebuilt as Commercial Hub

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François Leber Holds Fortified Base at La Prairie ──► La Prairie Preserved for Outbound Canoes

The Lachine Massacre was the most catastrophic terror attack in the history of New France. Dozens of homes were put to the torch, over twenty settlers were killed on the spot, and scores more were captured and dragged into the woods.

Yet amidst the smoke, ash, and horror, the stone fortifications built by Jacques Leber stood like an unyielding rock. Behind his thick masonry walls, Jacques, his family, and surviving neighbors beat back repeated attempts to breach the compound, holding their ground until militia reinforcements arrived.

Across the river at La Prairie, François Leber, his wife Jeanne Testard, and their daughter Marie Le Ber rallied their neighbors inside the palisaded sector of the parish. Though Iroquois war parties burned outlying barns and slaughtered livestock throughout the south shore, the fortified core of La Prairie held firm.

The massacre of 1689 shattered many weak-willed investors, but it could not break the Leber line. Within months of the disaster, Jacques Leber was back at his ledger books, rebuilding Lachine's warehouses, securing fresh shipments of trade goods from France, and re-establishing credit lines for the rivermen.

At La Prairie, François Leber repaired burned fences, replanted destroyed crops, and ensured that the vital south-shore staging ground remained fully operational for the outbound canoe brigades.

By the early 1690s, as François Leber aged and Jacques Leber managed his knighted estate, the torch was passed to the next generation. On October 25, 1684, Marie Le Ber had married François Bourassa at La Prairie.

Marie brought into the Bourassa family the complete legacy of her ancestors: the merchant grit of Jacques and François Leber, the noble wilderness diplomacy of the Godefroy truchements, and the double portion of Cavelier blood that gave her family its unbreakable willpower.

The merchant warehouses of Lachine and the fields of La Prairie were now permanently linked, setting the stage for the rise of the ultimate river dynasty: the Bourassa Fathers of the Fur Trade...

NEXT: CHAPTER 3- THE FATHERS OF THE FUR TRADE & THE BOURASSA DYNASTY (1659–1756)

https://laprairie-voyageur-canoes.blogspot.com/2026/10/chapter-3-fathers-of-fur-trade-bourassa.html

EMPIRES OF THE WILDERNESS- THE VOYAGEUR BLOODLINE OF LA PRAIRIE (1585–1917)

CHAPTER 1- THE VIKING TRAIL, CHAMPLAIN’S TRUCHEMENTS, & THE NORMANDY LINE (890–1678)

https://laprairie-voyageur-canoes.blogspot.com/2026/10/empires-of-wilderness-voyageur.html

CHAPTER 2- THE STAGING GROUND AT LA PRAIRIE & THE LACHINE MONOPOLY (1626–1723)

https://laprairie-voyageur-canoes.blogspot.com/2026/10/chapter-2-staging-ground-at-la-prairie.html

CHAPTER 3- THE FATHERS OF THE FUR TRADE & THE BOURASSA DYNASTY (1659–1756)

https://laprairie-voyageur-canoes.blogspot.com/2026/10/chapter-3-fathers-of-fur-trade-bourassa.html

CHAPTER 4- OUTLAWS, OUTPOSTS, & WILDERNESS SURVIVAL- RENÉ BOURASSA DIT LARONDE (1722–1778)

https://laprairie-voyageur-canoes.blogspot.com/2026/10/chapter-4-outlaws-outposts-wilderness.html

CHAPTER 5- UNITING THE LINES- THE CARIGNAN SOLDIER & THE BOOSHWAY (1682–1773)