Pierre Boucher (
1622-
1717) was born in
Lagny, near the city
Mortagne, in
France.
In his time, he was a very appreciated, pious, and honorable landowner in colonial New France, and was the first Canadian colonist to be ennobled by France's King Louis XIV.
With his father, he moved to Canada in 1634, and at age 18 became a missionary among the Jesuit Fathers, working in and about the Georgian Bay in order to convert the Huron First-Nations People (then Indians).
After he returned to Québec in 1641, he was a garrisoned soldier, and became a First Nations language interpreter, then commissary-general of the trading station in Trois-Rivières.
He was elected captain of the militia in 1651 and defended the colony from an attack by the a band of Iroquois. Because of this military victory, he was made governor of Trois-Rivières, keeping the the position until 1658. He acted as a sort of ambassador to France for the people of France's colonies in Canada, and in 1662, was reappointed Governor. He later founded the seigniorial parish "Boucherville".
In 1664 he published "L'histoire veritable et naturelle des moeurs et productions du pays de la Nouvelle-France, vulgairement dite le Canada". It was first translated into English in 1883.
In 1717, Boucher died, rather aptly, in Boucherville.
There is a museum in Trois-Rivières named after Pierre Boucher, as well as one of the pavilions of the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières.