The Lieutenant and the Voyageurs: Fort Chiewyan, Spring 1820
The Lieutenant and the Voyageurs
Captain John Franklin needed men. He'd walked 857 miles on snowshoes to get to Fort Chipewyan, and now he needed French-Canadian voyageurs willing to paddle him north to the edge of the known world. What happened next — who agreed, who refused, and who was paid and released — left a paper trail that leads directly to a family in this research file.
In the spring of 1820, two worlds that rarely meet in the historical record occupied the same wooden post on the shore of Lake Athabasca. One world was the Royal Navy's — disciplined, hierarchical, obsessed with longitude and magnetic variation, convinced that finding the Northwest Passage was a matter of national honor. The other world was the pays d'en haut — the vast interior of the continent, governed by the North West Company, paddle and portage and pemmican, French-Canadian men who had been working these rivers for generations.
Franklin needed the second world. And the second world, it turned out, was not entirely willing to be needed.
Captain Sir John Franklin (1786–1847). Watercolour drawn from life by William Derby, produced for an engraving published by Fisher in 1830. He wears the 1827 captain's uniform. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
The Man Who Walked 857 Miles to Find Them
John Franklin was a Royal Navy officer who had survived the Battle of Trafalgar, the burning of Washington, and an Arctic winter before anyone had heard of him. The Admiralty assigned him to the great project of his era: finding the Northwest Passage, the sea route through the Arctic archipelago north of Canada that cartographers had been trying to locate for three centuries.
His 1819–1822 overland expedition to the Polar Sea was his first attempt. He would leave England by ship, travel west across Canada by canoe and snowshoe, and then press north overland to the Arctic coast — mapping as he went. To do any of this, he needed voyageurs. Which meant he needed the North West Company.
He had set out from Cumberland House on January 18, 1820, on snowshoes, with his officer George Back and the seaman John Hepburn. By March 26, after sixty-eight days and 857 miles, he reached Fort Chipewyan. Then he waited — and recruited — for the better part of four months.
The Winter Journey
January 18 – March 26, 1820 · What Franklin recorded along the wayFranklin published his account in 1823 — Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819, 20, 21, and 22 — and it became an immediate bestseller. It is now in the public domain, and Chapter 4 deserves to be read in full by anyone with a French-Canadian ancestor in the fur trade. Franklin was a careful, literate observer, and he was watching a world that was already changing around him.
He describes the voyageurs from the first day on the trail. Even loading the sledges at Cumberland House produced what became a recurring dynamic:
We did not set out without considerable grumbling from the voyagers of both Companies respecting the overlading of their dogs. However we left the matter to be settled by our friends at the fort who were more conversant with winter travelling than ourselves.
The "grumbling voyageurs" is not a detail Franklin lingers on — he notes it, attributes it to experience, and moves on. But the dynamic it captures is real: these were professional men with their own expertise, their own standards, and their own sense of what they owed a Royal Navy officer who had just arrived in their country. They negotiated. They complained. They consulted their own judgment. A captain's rank meant nothing on the Athabasca.
What He Found in the Pays d'en Haut
Franklin's portrait of the voyageur world — written from observationChapter 4 is the richest source Franklin left us for the daily reality of fur trade travel. His officer Robert Hood kept a journal of extraordinary detail, and Franklin quotes it at length — including this methodical description of the snowshoe, a technology Europeans had been unable to improve upon:
A snowshoe is made of two light bars of wood fastened together at their extremities and projected into curves by transverse bars. The side bars have been so shaped by a frame and dried before a fire that the front part of the shoe turns up like the prow of a boat and the part behind terminates in an acute angle; the spaces between the bars are filled up with a fine netting of leathern thongs except that part behind the main bar which is occupied by the feet... All the superiority of European art has been unable to improve the native contrivance of this useful machine.
And of the voyageurs themselves, Franklin's portrait is specific and observed. Despite the tension — and there was genuine tension throughout the journey — he developed real appreciation for the men who hauled his equipment through the sub-Arctic. The evening camp scene he describes is one of the most vivid portraits of voyageur life in the historical record:
There are other inconveniences which, though keenly felt during the day's journey, are speedily forgotten when stretched out in the encampment before a large fire, you enjoy the social mirth of your companions who usually pass the evening in recounting their former feats in travelling. At this time the Canadians are always cheerful and merry and the only bar to their comfort arises from the frequent interruption occasioned by the dogs who are constantly prowling about the circle and snatching at every kind of food that happens to be within their reach. These useful animals are a comfort to them afterwards by the warmth they impart when lying down by their side or feet as they usually do.
Cheerful and merry in the evening, after eighteen miles through hip-deep snow. Recounting former feats of travel. Dogs sleeping at their feet. This is not romantic invention — it is a specific, observed scene. And it is precisely the world your French-Canadian ancestors occupied.
While Franklin was at Fort Chipewyan recruiting his men in the spring of 1820, George Simpson — the man who would soon run the entire merged HBC empire — was in the same Athabasca department writing his own journal. The introduction to that journal, written a century later by the economic historian H.A. Innis, captured what made the French-Canadian voyageur essential to the entire enterprise in a single sentence: nothing but their woodcraft and almost incredible hardihood, he wrote, could have survived the ordeal of the canoe routes.
The ordeal Innis described was specific and documented: from Montreal up the Ottawa and Mattawa, over the height of land to Lake Nipissing, down French River to Georgian Bay, past Sault Ste. Marie and along the north shore of Lake Superior to Fort William — then by canot du Nord through Lake of the Woods, Rainy River, Rainy Lake, over the height of land again, and northwest to the Athabasca. No fewer than 60 large lakes, 130 portages, and 200 smaller décharges between Ste. Anne on the Ottawa and the Athabasca country. A single voyage, every season, for the men who worked it.
Innis identified Rainy Lake — Lac La Pluie — as "the depot for the season's furs from the Athabasca." That is precisely where Gabriel Guilbault's F.4/29 account was kept before he transferred north. The Gabriel Guilbeau who appears in the Lac La Pluie blotter in 1820 was working at the staging post that Innis called the strategic pivot of the entire Athabasca operation.
Source: Simpson, George. Journal of Occurrences in the Athabasca Department, 1820 and 1821. Ed. E.E. Rich, intro. H.A. Innis. Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1938. Archive.org.
Frances Anne Hopkins, Voyageurs, 1869. Hopkins traveled the canoe routes herself and painted what she witnessed. The men Franklin needed — and eventually recruited — worked in brigades like this one, season after season, across thousands of miles of waterway. Library and Archives Canada / Bibliothèque et Archives Canada.
Fort Chipewyan, March 1820
The capital of the northern fur trade — and the problem Franklin found thereFranklin arrived at Fort Chipewyan on March 26, 1820, after a journey he described with characteristic understatement:
At four P.M. we had the pleasure of arriving at Fort Chipewyan and of being received by Messrs. Keith and Black, the partners of the North-West Company in charge, in the most kind and hospitable manner. Thus terminated a winter's journey of eight hundred and fifty-seven miles, in the progress of which there was a great intermixture of agreeable and disagreeable circumstances. Could the amount of each be balanced I suspect the latter would much preponderate; and amongst these the initiation into walking in snowshoes must be considered as prominent. The suffering it occasions can be but faintly imagined by a person who thinks upon the inconvenience of marching with a weight of between two and three pounds constantly attached to galled feet and swelled ankles. Perseverance and practice only will enable the novice to surmount this pain.
Fort Chipewyan, May 27, 1820 — sketched by George Back, who traveled with Franklin. The NWC post stands on its rocky promontory above Lake Athabasca; Dene/Chipewyan tipis are visible in the foreground. Franklin was present when Back made this sketch, still waiting for his full complement of voyageurs. Library and Archives Canada.
Fort Chipewyan was not a remote outpost — it was the capital of the Athabasca fur trade, established in 1788 and operating for over thirty years by the time Franklin arrived. It was a substantial compound: storehouses, living quarters, the NWC partners' mess, a small population of Métis and Chipewyan families, and a steady traffic of hunters and voyageurs moving between the Athabasca, the Peace, and the Mackenzie river systems.
Franklin had arrived early — the open-water season was still months away — and he immediately began pressing both the NWC and HBC for voyageurs. What he heard was not encouraging. The NWC partner John Stuart had already warned him at Pierre au Calumet: experienced men would be "backward in offering their services." The reason was specific and well-known. A previous NWC expedition under Mr. Livingstone, sent to open trade with the Inuit near the Mackenzie River mouth, had been attacked. The crew was destroyed. Every voyageur in the Athabasca district knew the story.
Franklin was asking men to paddle north of Great Slave Lake, down the Coppermine River, and along an unmapped Arctic coastline toward territory where another NWC party had recently been killed. These were professional watermen, not adventurers. They understood the risk precisely — better than Franklin did.
What changed the calculation was money, pressure from the companies, and eventually the particular courage of individual men. Franklin ultimately assembled his full complement. But it took from March 26 to early July to do it.
The Recruitment — Spring and Early Summer, 1820
How Franklin got his men — and who didn't go northChapter 4 of the Narrative documents the recruitment process in granular detail. Franklin was thorough and meticulous — he kept notes on every conversation, every arrangement, every refusal. The key passage comes from pages 148–149 of the first edition, describing a joint meeting on May 25 with the NWC and HBC partners:
Several of them seemed now disposed to volunteer; indeed, on the same evening, two men from the North-West Company offered themselves and were accepted.
This single sentence matters enormously for the documentary record. It establishes the date (June 3, 1820, the evening following the May 25 meeting), the company (NWC), and the mechanism: men came forward voluntarily. Franklin paid through the company books. Wages and short-term payments were recorded as credits in the individual men's NWC accounts — not in the published Narrative, which names only the core voyageurs who traveled all the way to the Arctic coast.
By early July, Franklin had assembled his final complement. Then came the discharge. Page 166 of the first edition is the passage that closes the chapter — and opens a research question:
...by discharging those men who were less willing to undertake the journey; of these three were Englishmen, one American, and three Canadians.
Three Canadians. Engaged at Fort Chipewyan, paid off, and released before the expedition headed north toward Great Slave Lake. The remaining sixteen Canadian voyageurs proceeded north to Fort Providence — and their names appear in the roster Franklin published. The three who were discharged do not. They were paid and released. They returned to their lives in the Athabasca district.
A Name in the Ledger
Where the Narrative and the account books intersectThe Hudson's Bay Company Archives in Winnipeg hold the ledger books of the North West Company — thousands of individual accounts for the 3,700+ men the NWC employed between 1795 and 1821. Searching those accounts for the name Guilbault returns five entries. Two of them belong to a man recorded variously as Paul Guilbeau, Gibault Paul, and Guilbian Paul.
Paul appears in the F.4/29 Lac La Pluie Blotter (1820), indexed just two entries apart from Gabriel Guilbault — suggesting both men were working at the same post at the same time. Paul then appears in the F.4/37 Athabasca General Blotter (1819–1821), the account book for the very district where Franklin was recruiting.
Paul's F.4/37 account contains an entry that is not explained by ordinary NWC business: a credit of 100 livres, recorded as "By Lieut Franklin."
The Guilbault Connection — What the Records Show
Paul Guilbeau appears in the NWC Athabasca General Blotter (F.4/37) for 1820–1821. His account carries a credit of 100 livres attributed to "Lieut Franklin" — the standard way the NWC would record a payment made to one of their men by an outside party working through the company books.
Franklin was at Fort Chipewyan from March 26 through approximately July 10, 1820. He recruited Canadian voyageurs for short-term engagements. He paid through the NWC books. He discharged three Canadians before heading north, each of whom would have received exactly this kind of credit entry in their accounts. The 100-livre amount is consistent with short-term contract work rather than full expedition wages.
Paul Guilbeau's relationship to Gabriel Guilbault père — the voyageur who married Marie Josephte Abitakijikokwe — has not yet been definitively established. The two men appear two entries apart in the Lac La Pluie index, worked the same territory in the same years, and share a surname recorded in identical phonetic variations by the NWC clerks. The most probable interpretation is that they were brothers, or otherwise closely related. Research is ongoing.
Read the full Guilbault Line documentary series →
The Abitakijikokwe Discovery — Gabriel's wife, documented in 15 Quebec parish records →
The Evidentiary Chain — What Each Source Establishes
| What It Shows | Source | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Paul Guilbeau working in the Athabasca district, 1820–1821 | HBCA, F.4/37, Athabasca General Blotter, pp. 106 & 117 | Confirmed |
| Franklin at Fort Chipewyan, March 26 – approximately July 10, 1820 | Franklin, Narrative, Chapter IV, pp. 142–166 | Confirmed |
| Franklin formally requisitioned Canadian voyageurs from the NWC, spring 1820 | Franklin, Narrative, pp. 148–149 | Confirmed |
| Franklin paid voyageurs through the NWC company books | Franklin, Narrative, pp. 165–166; general NWC practice | Confirmed |
| Three Canadians were discharged and paid at Fort Chipewyan before departure | Franklin, Narrative, p. 166 | Confirmed |
| Paul Guilbeau's account carries a 100-livre credit "By Lieut Franklin" | HBCA, F.4/37, Paul Guilbeau account | Confirmed |
| Paul Guilbeau named explicitly in Admiralty financial records for the expedition | National Archives UK, ADM series (not yet examined) | Pending — next research step |
What the Voyageurs Highway Looked Like
Paul and Gabriel Guilbeau were working at the far northern end of a canoe road that stretched over 3,000 miles from Montreal. The same highway that connected the St. Lawrence settlements to the Great Lakes extended northwest to Fort Chipewyan and beyond — up the Peace, down the Mackenzie, north to the edge of the known world. Franklin traveled part of it in winter. The Guilbaults paddled it in summer, season after season, for years.
The Voyageurs Highway: the dotted line marks the canoe route from Montreal through the Great Lakes, across Lake Winnipeg, and northwest to Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca — a journey of over 3,000 miles that the fur trade brigades traveled every year. Franklin traveled the final segment of this route on snowshoes in the winter of 1819–1820.
What Happened Next
Two men — very different endingsFranklin survived his 1819–1822 expedition, just. The return journey in the autumn of 1821 became a catastrophe of starvation and violence — eleven men died. Franklin returned to England, wrote his Narrative, and became famous. He returned to the Arctic in 1825–27 for a second, more successful overland expedition. Then, in 1845, at the age of 59, he sailed again — commanding HMS Erebus and HMS Terror — on what was intended to be the final, triumphant Northwest Passage transit.
Both ships became icebound in Victoria Strait in September 1846. Franklin died June 11, 1847. The remaining 105 men abandoned the ships and walked south. None survived.
HMS Erebus was found by Parks Canada in September 2014, lying in the shallow waters of Queen Maud Gulf. HMS Terror was discovered in Terror Bay in 2016, remarkably well preserved on the sea floor. Both discoveries were guided in significant part by Inuit oral tradition — knowledge that had preserved the ships' approximate positions for 170 years. Excavations continue.
Paul's NWC account was settled at the 1821 merger. The next documented record places him in Joliette on April 24, 1827: a notarial act recorded by notary Jean-Olivier Leblanc — a constitution de rente viagère, a life annuity constituted by Josephte Lorion in Paul's favor. Someone was formally obligated to pay Paul a regular income for the rest of his life. He was not a man who came home empty-handed.
The parallel with his brother Gabriel is striking. In 1827, Gabriel Guilbault also appears in a notarial record — a land transaction documenting his acquisition of 68 acres along the Ottawa River. Both brothers, documented in Quebec in the same year, six years after their Athabasca accounts closed. When exactly they left the pays d'en haut is not recorded, but by the spring of 1827 both were back — one with land on the Ottawa River, the other with a life annuity in Joliette.
Paul died at St-Paul-de-Lavaltrie on January 2, 1831, and was buried there two days later. The burial register recorded his occupation as cultivateur — a farmer, age 73. The Athabasca country is nowhere in it.
The three Canadians Franklin discharged at Fort Chipewyan in July 1820 did not go to the Arctic. They did not see the Coppermine River or the Polar Sea. Their names do not appear in the published Narrative. They received their 100 livres and returned to their lives.
Franklin's name is on a cairn on King William Island. Paul Guilbault is in a burial register at St-Paul-de-Lavaltrie, recorded as a farmer, age 73. His brother Gabriel is in a land record on the Ottawa River, 68 acres, the same year — 1827. One man became a legend. Two brothers went home. And one of them left a line in an account book that connects them all — 200 years later, in the Hudson's Bay Company Archives, waiting to be read.
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