Fonds MSG 839 - John Thomson Fonds

John Thomson was born in Montreal. Sometime during his career as a fur trader, he married a Metis woman named Françoise Boucher, a la façon du pays. They had six children and settled down in Lower Canada. He entered the fur trade as an apprentice clerk with the North West Company on May 23, 1795. Thomson spent his first few years posted in the Assiniboine country and on the Upper Red River, but by 1798, he had begun his career in the Athabasca Department. He led the North West Company’s effort to expand the business down the Mackenzie River. Thomson kept a journal that documented his experiences in the Mackenzie River District from 1800. In 1802, he left the Mackenzie River for Great Slave Lake, where he remained for two years before being posted to the Peace River. Thomson returned to Montreal for one year in 1810 for a year of absence, then was posted to the English River Department in Île-à-la-Crosse, where he was in opposition to John Clarke of the Hudson’s Bay Company. He retired when the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company merged, and died in 1828.