Jacques Le Ber dit La Rose

Biography

Jacques Le Ber’s business reached well beyond the fur trade. By 1664, he and his partner Charles Le Moyne had shops in both Montréal and Québec city, two St. Lawrence River communities in present-day Québec, Canada, dealing in products that included cod as well as furs. Their partnership also joined two families: Jacques had married Charles’s sister Jeanne at Montréal on January 7, 1658.

Born around 1633 at Pistre or Pîtres, in the Rouen area of Normandy in northern France, Jacques was a son of Robert Le Ber and Colette Cavelier. He settled at Montréal in 1657. Property acquisition accompanied the expansion of his trade, including a share of Île-Saint-Paul and the arrière-fief of Boisbriand.

The 1681 census gives some measure of the resulting establishment. Jacques and Jeanne appear with five children and numerous people listed as domestics. Their property included thirty cattle, forty sheep and 150 arpents under cultivation.

His commercial influence brought him into discussions with the colonial government about taxation and the brandy trade. It also connected him to the Compagnie du Nord, formed to compete with the Hudson’s Bay Company. Warfare was part of this career: he built a fortified stone mill in 1686 and participated in a French attack on Mohawk territory in 1693. In 1696 he paid 6,000 livres for letters of nobility.

Jeanne died in 1682. Jacques died at Montréal on November 25, 1706. He was François Le Ber’s brother.

Jacques and François were members of Montréal’s citizen militia in 1663. With Charles Le Moyne, Jacques built the LeBer-LeMoyne trading post at Lachine between 1669 and 1671. Parks Canada identifies the surviving buildings among the oldest associated with Canada’s fur trade.