The Brothers Guilbault: When Two Men Paddle the Same Routes and Only One Leaves A Trace
The Brothers Guilbault
Gabriel Guilbault's voyageur life surfaces in the Quebec parish records. His brother Paul's doesn't — not once, not ever, in any document bearing his name. Yet both men worked for the same employer, at the same posts, in the same years. Two brothers. Completely different documentary footprints. And what that difference reveals about French-Canadian genealogy.
Paul Guilbault was born on April 23, 1761, at Notre-Dame-de-Montréal. His brother Gabriel arrived the following year. Same parents — Gabriel Guilbault and Marie Charlotte Morin of L'Assomption. Same north shore of the St. Lawrence. Same world.
Sixty years later, both men were in the Athabasca country, working for the North West Company, in the same years, at the same posts. When I searched the Hudson's Bay Company Archives, I found them at adjacent reference numbers in the Lac La Pluie index — two entries apart, two brothers working the same territory.
What I didn't expect was how completely differently they appear in every other record I've ever found for them.
The Voyageurs Highway: over 3,000 miles of canoe route from Montreal to Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca. Both Gabriel and Paul Guilbault worked the northern reaches of this system — Lac La Pluie and the Athabasca department — in 1820 and 1821. Neither Quebec record that survives for either man names this route.
Two Brothers, Two Very Different Records
What the Quebec parish system preserved — and what it erasedGabriel's voyageur life surfaces in Quebec. A single 1798 baptism record at Saint-Paul-de-Joliette identifies him as "voyageur et maintenant agriculteur" — voyageur, and now farmer. That phrase is what sent me to the Hudson's Bay Company Archives in the first place. It is a thread to pull. And when I pulled it, it led to three NWC account books, a 188-livre linking balance between Lac La Pluie and Athabasca, and five years of documented service that ended when the North West Company merged with the HBC in 1821.
Paul has no such thread. In every Quebec document bearing his name — baptism, marriage, nineteen children's baptisms, his children's marriage registers, his own burial record from January 1831 — he is a mason and a farmer. Maçon. Agriculteur. Cultivateur. The word voyageur does not appear once.
The Voyageur the Records Preserved
The 1798 Saint-Paul-de-Joliette baptism record calls him "voyageur et maintenant agriculteur." That single dual designation — voyageur, and now farmer — is unusual enough to stand out immediately. It sent me directly to the HBCA.
Three account books later: F.4/29 at Lac La Pluie, F.4/37 at Athabasca, F.4/32 for the full 1816–1821 employment period. 336 livres. Account settled. Route documented. Five years in the pays d'en haut — visible from Quebec.
The Voyageur the Records Erased
Not once, in any document, does any Quebec priest call Paul Guilbault a voyageur. Baptism, marriage, nineteen children's records, his children's marriage registers, his burial: maçon, agriculteur, cultivateur. The same man, the same routes, the same employer.
Two pages in the HBCA are the entire case. F.4/37, pages 106 and 117: Paul Guilbeau, Athabasca, 1820–1821. Wages 617 livres. Settled. Without those two pages, his five years in the interior would be permanently invisible.
Finding the Gap
What the occupation timeline revealed — and the last legal act before departureThe first hint that something was missing came from systematically reviewing every Quebec record bearing Paul's name. His children's marriage records give a consistent occupation picture — but a careful reading revealed a gap that shouldn't be there.
Paul Guilbault Père — Complete Occupation Record, Quebec Sources
–
1818 [no Quebec record accounts for these years — the gap that only the HBCA fills]
Maçon in 1814. Cultivateur in 1819. Five years unaccounted for — no census, no notarial act, no parish event to explain the gap or the occupation shift. In a man whose documentary record is otherwise thorough, that silence is a signal worth following.
The second hint came from a notarial act. On July 22, 1820, Paul appeared before Notary Barthélémy Joliette at the village of Industry to render the final guardianship accounts for the five orphaned children of his brother Louis Guilbault — who had died, along with his wife Josephe Deziel Labreche, within five days of each other in May 1813. Paul had managed the estate for seven years: a farm sale, a grain sale, individual children's shares with interest. He settled every account when the eldest minor, Marguerite, came of age.
On the same afternoon, his son Joseph appeared and paid off a debt he owed his father: 79 livres and 12 sols.
Father and son settling accounts on the same afternoon. Every obligation resolved, every ledger closed. Paul departed for the pays d'en haut shortly after. It was the last documented act of his Quebec life before the NWC account books open in his name.
What the HBCA Shows
F.4/37, pages 106 and 117 — the entire evidentiary caseThe Hudson's Bay Company Archives Name Index for the NWC Account Books — a searchable database of over 3,700 employee names — returns Paul Guilbeau/Guilbault in two volumes: F.4/37, the Athabasca general blotter, and F.4/32, the main NWC ledger. His brother Gabriel appears at adjacent reference numbers in the Lac La Pluie section. The brothers were working together.
Page 106 of the Athabasca blotter records Paul's debit entries for the 1820 season: 200 pounds of rendered fat pemmican — the high-calorie travel food that sustained canoe brigades — and a transfer balance from Fort William, the NWC's great inland depot on Lake Superior and the staging point for all Athabasca brigades. Page 117 is the heart of the case.
By Lieut Franklin — 100
To Sundries at Lac La Pluie — 16
1821 By Wages — 617.14
To Balance — 669.14 / 669.14
1821 By Balance — 617.14
SETTLED
The 100-livre credit "By Lieut Franklin" corresponds to Lieutenant John Franklin's First Polar Expedition, which recruited voyageurs at Fort Chipewyan in the spring of 1820. The entry "To Sundries at Lac La Pluie — 16" independently corroborates the F.4/32 Lac La Pluie account, confirming Paul's presence at that post. His total wages: 617 livres and 14 sols. Account settled in 1821 at the NWC–HBC merger.
calling Paul a voyageur
settled 1821
that constitute the entire case
Coming Home
What a man did with 617 livres and a quietly resumed identityPaul is documented in Joliette by April 1827 — at most six years after the NWC account was settled. The notarial record of that month is the beginning of a post-return financial portfolio that tells us exactly what he did with his wages.
He lent them out. Joseph Lorion, a cultivateur at Grand Ruisseau in Kildare Township, received 228 livres from Paul and constituted a life annuity of 10 minots of wheat per year, secured by mortgage. The following June, Pierre Lorion — almost certainly Joseph's brother — received 200 livres and constituted a second life annuity of 4 minots per year, secured by mortgage on an adjoining farm. Total capital deployed from NWC wages: 428 livres. Annual grain income at peak: 14 minots of wheat from two secured farm loans.
Paul died on January 2, 1831. His burial register at St-Paul-de-Lavaltrie recorded him as cultivateur, age 73. His son Paul fils appeared before the same notary that July and received full repayment of the Joseph Lorion capital — 228 livres plus all outstanding rente — giving final discharge.
What This Means for the Research
The post-return annuity portfolio is significant not only as proof that Paul came home — it's proof of the economic consequence of NWC service. He came back with capital sufficient to fund two secured grain annuities, live as a financially independent cultivateur for four years, and leave a settled estate for his son. The 617-livre NWC settlement is the probable source of that capital.
Together, the occupation gap, the tutelle as pre-departure evidence, the HBCA account pages, and the post-return annuity portfolio construct a complete evidentiary arc. Not a single element of that arc would be visible if only the Quebec records were consulted.
Read the full Invisible Voyageur case study →
Read The Voyageur Years: Gabriel Guilbault in the NWC Records →
What Paul's Case Means
A word in a burial register, and what it doesn't provePaul Guilbault père died on January 2, 1831, age 73. The priest who buried him wrote: "Paul Guilbau décédé avant hier agé de soixante et treize ans, époux de Marie Olive Mulot, cultivateur."
Not a word about the pays d'en haut. Not a word about the Athabasca. Not a word about the Lieutenant who paid him 100 livres at Fort Chipewyan. The parish record is complete — and entirely silent on the most remarkable decade of his life.
The Implication for Every French-Canadian Genealogist
Paul's case is not unusual. It may be the norm. The men who signed NWC contracts at interior posts — who paddled to the Athabasca and back, who earned their wages in livres and came home with capital — returned to their Quebec parishes and resumed their farming identities.
Cultivateur in a burial register is not proof a man never paddled to the Athabasca. It is proof he was recorded as a farmer on the day he died. Those are different things. The Hudson's Bay Company Archives hold more than 3,700 names in the NWC Account Books Name Index alone. Some of those names belong to men exactly like Paul.
Frances Anne Hopkins, Voyageurs, 1869. Hopkins traveled the canoe routes herself and painted what she witnessed. Paul and Gabriel Guilbault worked these routes in brigades like this one — and both came home to Quebec without leaving a single voyageur trace in the parish records. Library and Archives Canada.
The full case studies — occupation timeline, HBCA methodology, the tutelle as pre-departure evidence, and the post-return annuity portfolio — are now part of The Pays d'en Haut collection alongside the Gabriel case study and the Abitakijikokwe Discovery.
Two brothers. The same posts. The same employer. The same years. And only because a company of fur traders kept meticulous financial records — and because those records survived two hundred years in a Winnipeg archive — do we know that both of them were there.
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