A Fur Trader: Eustache-Ignace Trottier dit DesriviÅres.
This portrait illustrates a phenomenon that was quite common in early Canadian society, namely, a trade being passed on from father to son. Painted in oil on canvas, it is the work of Franìois Malepart de Beaucourt (1740-94) who was born in the village of Laprairie and was the son of Paul de Beaucourt (1700-56), also a painter. Eustache Trottier was sixty-six and at the end of his career as a fur trader when this portrait was made. For four generations his family had participated in the fur trade. Their immigrant forebear had come from a Perche village with his family in 1645, or thereabouts, and had settled in the region of Trois-RiviÅres with its excellent opportunities for trade with the Amerindians. His sons lived at Batiscan and Champlain and, like the next generation, became coureurs de bois, voyageurs or fur traders. Indeed, the Trottiers became a veritable clan of fur traders. Julien, the father of Eustache, settled in MontrÄal early in the eighteenth century and became a supplier-outfitter for the trade in the West and a respected member of the middle class. He left eight children who married into the merchant families. Thus, with the Trottiers, we are able to observe the social ascent of a family from the poor immigrant to the wealthy, self-assured merchant pictured here. Not all of the coureurs de bois, however, were as fortunate as the Trottiers who were the exception rather than the rule.
