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coureur de bois
[< Cdn F "woods ranger"]
DCHP-1 (pre-1967)
Entry from the DCHP-1 (pre-1967)
This entry may contain outdated or offensive information, terms, and examples.
1n. — Hist.
an unlicensed trader who ranged the forest in search of furs.
See: bush-ranger(def. 2),bush-runner,French pedlar,wood-ranger(def. 2),wood rover,woods-runner(def. 1),voyageur canoe
Although long used in English in Canada, this term is often treated as a French word still.
Quotations
1703
Coureurs de Bois, i.e. Forest Rangers, [are] so called from employing their whole life in the rough exercise of transporting merchandise goods to the lakes of Canada . . . to trade with the savages. . . .
1898
After the British conquest enterprising Scotch traders began to organize the considerable trade that the coureurs de bois had created.
1963
The licenses had been multiplied by Frontenac, and the need for them ignored by the outfitting merchants and the coureurs de bois alike.
2n.
an independent fur trader allied with the Montreal fur companies.
Quotations
1801
Hence they derived the title of Coureurs des Bois, became a kind of pedlars, and were extremely useful to the merchants engaged in the fur trade. . . .
1907
. . . after the French regime several Scotch Merchants of Montreal prosecuted [the fur trade] with more vigor than heretofore. This they did under the name of "The Northwest Company." Their agents and "Coureur des Bois" [sic] were ever pushing westward and had posts strung from Ottawa to the Rocky Mountains.
1938
Overnight there sprang up a demand for these cast-off and dispossessed voyageurs and coureurs de bois as guides, and once again their lilting chansons awakened the echoes of the Ottawa valley.