Marie Anne Gaboury Lagimodiere, Study Guides, Projects, Research of Indian History

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MARTE ANNE GABOURY LAGIMODIERE* First "Canadian" woman in the North West Introduction In the following paper I have attempted to paint a picture of what life would have been like for Marie Anne (Gaboury) Lagimodiére, the first "Canadian" or white woman to live in the North West. There are limited sources for information about Marie Anne--as Louis Riel's grandmother she merits mention in a number of publications about him, but there is not a lot with a great deal of detail. The only primary source is her memoir as dictated to Abbé Georges Dugas when she was an old lady; all subsequent accounts are based on this.! The bulk of the information about her has come from a family history written by Hector Coutu and published in 1980.2 It could be said that Marie Anne Gaboury was "pioneer woman" par excellence as she ventured where no other woman of her background and upbringing had yet gone; on the other hand, unlike what we may perceive as a pioneer, she did not put down roots for quite a few years preferring to live a nomadic life with her husband on the plains and spending winters in the shelter of a Hudson's Bay fort. In fact she lived very much as some of the Métis women lived and has on occasion been referred to as Métis. *There are various spellings of the Lagimodiére name throughout the material published about them, for example Lajimoniére and Lagimoniére. As Hector Coutu, in compiling a family history has used this spelling, that is what I have used throughout this paper.