Atwater Library and Computer Centre

By Susan McGuire

François-Antoine Laroque, elected first vice-president of the Mechanics’ Institution in 1830, had perhaps one of the most exciting lives among the early members of that new organization—at least during the middle years of his life.

He was born in 1784, son of a prosperous fur-trading and commercial family in L’Assomption. He was first sent to Collège de Montréal for his education, then following his father’s early death in 1792, and his mother’s remarriage to a young Scotsman and Loyalist from New York named Hugh Munro, he was sent to school in the U.S. to learn English.

At age 17, he joined the XY Company as a clerk, and soon thereafter joined the North-West Company, at which time his explorations and furtrading were centred from Grand Portage near Winnipeg to Missouri, Montana and Wyoming. He wrote two respected journals, considered of significance in the United States--the Missouri Journal and the Yellowstone Journal--because he was probably the first white man to meet and certainly the first to detail and comment on the surroundings and activities of the native peoples he encountered.

In 1805, Laroque left the west for Montreal. Like several others making the transition from fur trading, he became a commission merchant, and invested in steamboats and railways. He joined other leading furtraders in the Beaver Club, where he became secretary.

He was a captain in the Chasseurs canadiens during the War of 1812, and was imprisoned by the Americans in Cincinnati for six months. He became chief warden of Notre-Dame Church and secretary of its building committee.  He was a director of the Bank of Montreal from 1817-1826, a harbour commissioner, and vice-president of the Montreal Savings Bank.  He was an 1822 charter member of the Montreal Committee for Trade (forerunner of the Board of Trade), a governor of the Montreal General Hospital, a director of Champlain & St. Lawrence Railway, and a trustee of the Lachine Turnpike Road.

Along with Louis-Joseph Papineau and Horatio Gates, F.-A. Laroque was on the board of directors of the British & Canadian School during the 1820s.   A secular, free or low-fee school for English and French working class boys and girls, some of school’s philosophy was carried forward into adult education at the Mechanics’ Institution.

Even with all his community and business activities, he was nevertheless arrested for a short time during the 1837-38 Rebellions, apparently for distributing a newspaper article that had first appeared in London. His commission merchant company, Laroque Bertrand, went bankrupt in 1838.  Three years later, in 1841, after his only son was married, he withdrew from business.   In the early 1850s, he undertook an extended trip to the United States.   He spent his last years in seclusion, from 1855 to 1869, at Hôtel-Dieu in Saint-Hyacinthe.
 
In 1818, he had married Marie-Catherine-Émilie-Cotté, daughter of an important fur baron, Gabriel Cotté.  She died in 1838.  Their only son, François-Alfred-Chartier Laroque, was active in Montreal church affairs, real estate and in businesses including City & District Savings Bank, was a member of the Mechanics’ Institute in the 1840s, and for a time—with his father-in-law Olivier Berthelet--was landlord of the Mechanics’ Institute.

Adapted from an article that originally appeared in the Westmount Independent.

Susan McGuire is the official historian of the Atwater Library of the Mechanics' Institute of Montreal. You can contact her by email at:
s.f.mcguire AT sympatico DOT ca.