Marie-Anne Gaboury
| Marie-Anne Gaboury | |
|---|---|
| Born |
2 August 1780 Maskinongé, Quebec |
| Died | 14 December 1875 (aged 95) Western Canada |
| Occupation | mother, settler |
Marie-Anne Lagimodière (née Gaboury) (2 August 1780 – 14 December 1875) was a French-Canadian woman noted as both the grandmother of Louis Riel, and as the first woman of European descent to travel to and settle in what is now Western Canada.
Gaboury was born in Maskinongé, Quebec, a village near modern Trois-Rivières. Her early life was uneventful, and she lived there until her marriage on 21 April 1806 to Jean-Baptiste Lagimodière. Lagimodière was originally from nearby Saint-Ours; he had become a Coureur des bois employed in the fur trade by the Hudson's Bay Company in Rupert's Land.
Immediately following their marriage, and in defiance of the custom of the time, Gaboury travelled to the west with her new husband. They went first to the area near the confluence of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers near what would later become the Red River Colony, and, eventually, modern Winnipeg, Manitoba. They wintered at a Métis encampment near Pembina (under British sovereignty at the time but now in North Dakota), where the first of her eight children was born on 6 January 1807.
The following spring, the Lagimodières travelled to the valley of the Saskatchewan River, settling eventually in what is now northern Saskatchewan, where they remained until 1811, living a semi-nomadic lifestyle among other French-Canadian trappers and their native wives. During this period, Marie-Anne accompanied her husband on many trapping and buffalo hunting expeditions, often venturing as far west as present-day Alberta. Her second child was born on the open prairie shortly after her horse had bolted towards a herd of buffalo, and on another occasion she fought and shot a large bear that had attacked one of their companions.
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