Pierre de la verendrye biography sample

Soldier, fur trader, explorer.

Born in Trois-Rivières, Canada on 17 November 1685, he was briefly a student at the seminary of Quebec before entering the military.

He served in the French army from 1708 to 1712 but could not afford the social obligations, so he returned to Canada, where he became a farmer-cum-fur trader. In 1726 he joined his brother Jacques-René in the western fur trade north of Lake Superior, soon beginning a quest for the “western sea,” which by all contemporary accounts lay not far to the west of the border lakes.

Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye () was a Canadian soldier and explorer who traveled farther west than any previous European.

French Canadian soldier, fur trader, and explorer whose exploits, little honoured during his lifetime, rank him as one of the greatest explorers of the.

Pierre received a little formal education at the seminary of Quebec where he was a student from to Already, however, he had chosen a military career.

La Vérendrye is therein depicted as a man who was motivated by selfish interests and who, lacking education and natural aptitudes, was unsuited.

Ibid., 4.

His plan was to establish French posts further west -- not coincidentally, in rich fur-trading country -- from which the western sea could be easily reached. He and three sons set out in 1731 to execute this design. The extent to which he was ever seriously committed to the idea of the western sea is open to question.

In 1731 he declared to th