The Beaver Club

Date: 1785 [unknown]
Location: Montreal, Lower Canada
Surname/tag: Canada

Contents 1 The Beaver Club 1.1 Founders 1.2 New Members 1.3 Decline 1.4 Links

The Beaver Club

The Beaver Club was a gentleman's dining club founded in 1785 by the mostly English speaking fur-trading 'barons' of Montreal. According to the club's rules, the object of their meeting was "to bring together, at stated periods during the winter season, a set of men highly respectable in society, who had passed their best days in a savage country and had encountered the difficulties and dangers incident to a pursuit of the fur trade of Canada". Only fragmentary records remain of their meetings, but from these it is clear that the Beaver Club was "an animated expression of the esprit de corps of the North West Company". The men of the Beaver Club were the predecessors of Montreal's Square Milers.

Founders

All the names below appeared in Rules and Regulations of the Beaver Club, 1819, when only one of the original members was still alive. The nineteen original members were ranked in seniority by the date on which they had first entered the interior of Canada. As such, the French Canadian fur traders who had remained in the business after the British Conquest of New France held the most senior rank. In that order, with the dates in brackets of their first adventures into the Canadian wilderness, the original nineteen members were:

Charles Chaboillez (1751)

Maurice-Régis Blondeau (1752)

Hypolitte Desrivieres (1753)

Etienne-Charles Campion (1753)

Gabriel Cotté (1760)

Alexander Henry the elder (1761)

Joseph-Louis Ainsse (1762)

Benjamin Frobisher (1765)

James McGill (1766)

George McBeath (1766)

James Finlay (1766)

Joseph Frobisher (1768)

John McGill (1770)

Peter Pond (1770)

Matthew Lessey (1770)

David McCrae (1772)

John McNamara (1772)

Thomas Frobisher (1773)

Jean-Baptiste Jobert (1775)

New Members

New members were elected almost every year from 1787, though the dates of their first voyages into the interior were not always recorded. The list below shows new members inducted by year, and if known the year of their first voyage in brackets:

1787: Jean-Baptiste Tabean (1770); Josiah Bleakley

1789: Patrick Small (nephew of Major-General John Small)

1790: Nicholas Montour (1767); Venant St. Germain; Leon St. Germain; Joseph Howard

1791: John Gregory; Andrew Todd; Jacques Giasson

1792: Simon McTavish

1793: Myer Michaels; James Grant

1795: Isaac Todd; William McGillivray; Sir Alexander Mackenzie

1796: Angus Shaw; Roderick Mackenzie of Terrebonne

1799: Duncan McGillivray; George Gillespie

1801: Jacques Porlier

1802: Alexander Cuthbert

1803: Alexander Fraser; Simon Fraser

1807: D. Mitchell; Thomas Thain; Lewis Crawford; D. Mitchell, the younger; Peter Grant; Alex McDougall; Pierre de Rastel de Rocheblave (1793); John Forsyth; John Richardson; John Finlay; Aeneas Cameron; William McKay

1808: Sir John Johnson; John MacDonald of Garth; Archibald Norman McLeod; Alexander Mackenzie (1783)

1809: John Wills; Charles Chaboillez, younger; Alexander McKay

1810: John Sayer

1813: James Hughes; Kenneth McKenzie

1814: Archibald McLellan (who won an award for bravery); George Moffat; W. McRae; Henry McKenzie

1815: Jasper Tough; J.M. Lamothe (1799); F.A. LaRocque; Thomas McMurray; Robert Henry; Peter Warren Dease; Charles Grant; J.W. Dease

1816: David Stuart

1817: William Henry; Jacob Franks (1799); David David (1807); John McLaughlin (1807); Hugh McGillis; John McDonald; Allan McDonell; James Grant; John Siveright (1799); John George MacTavish

1818: Simon McGillivray; Angus Bethune; Jules-Maurice Quesnel; John McGillivray; James Leith

1820: Sir George Simpson

Finally, there were eleven honorary members, many of whom were the captains of the ships who transported their furs back to England. They could only attend at meetings held especially for them in the summer months. The dates in brackets show the year of their admission:

Captain Featonby of the Eweretta (1789)

Captain Gibson of the Integrity (1789)

Monsieur le Compte Andriani, of Milan (1791)

Captain Edwards of the Indian Trader (1792)

Colonel Daniel Robertson, of Struan (1793)

Major-General Sir John Doyle (1796)

Captain Edward Boyd of the Montreal (1800)

Captain Alexander Patterson of the Eweretta (1800)

Major George Clerk, of the 49th Regiment (1807)

Lord Viscount Chabot (1808), Quartermaster General of Canada

Captain Sarmon of the Mary (1808)

Decline

As trading posts were built it had become less dangerous to travel in the wilderness, and without competitor's territories to invade, the early spirit of adventure had disappeared from newcomers to the fur trade. By 1809, the seventy-year-old Alexander Henry hinted at a segregation between the young and old members in a letter to John Askin: "There is only us four old friends (himself, James McGill, Isaac Todd and Joseph Frobisher) alive, all the new North westards are a parcel of Boys and upstarts, who were not born in our time, and supposes they know much more of the Indian trade than any before them".

The club continued to meet until 1804, and there was a resurgence of interest between 1807 and 1824, but when Sir George Simpson tried to revive its traditions in 1827 it was doomed to failure – the spirit enjoyed by the earlier traders had gone. However, several members, such as Angus Shaw, Robert Dickson, William McGillivray and John Forsyth became members of the smaller Canada Club in London (founded in 1810, and still extant), where meetings in the 1830s were reminiscent of the old Beaver Club.

Links

• Wikipedia - Beaver Club
• Rules and Regulations of the Beaver Club. Montréal: W. Gray, 1819.