1
In Search of British Columbia’s Early French Ranchers
Jean Barman
This talk is dedicated to my son’s late father-in-law Dr. Yves Bajard, a water
engineer whose involvement with the Nicola Valley watershed convinced him, and
through him myself, of the Guichon family’s importance to British Columbia’s
ranching history.
It is for this reason I particularly welcome this invitation to search out early
French ranchers, being the Guichons along with half a dozen others I have come
across in my ongoing research. The Guichons and the others function well as
counterpoints. Their similarities and differences point up the diversity and
independence of spirit that has long marked British Columbian life. The stories in
tandem reveal factors encouraging Frenchmen’s success or not, and why so.
I need to add that French Canadians, as opposed to men born in France, also
ranched in early British Columbia, sometimes emanating from their employment in
the fur economy and also otherwise, as in the Okanagan. I have written about them
elsewhere, and this presentation is limited to men from France.1
For Frenchman to be ranchers in early British Columbia is not as unusual as
it might seem at first consideration. Following on the fur trade, fairly modest in its
demographic consequences, a gold rush beginning in 1858 brought many thousands
of newcomers from around the world, including continental Europe and, more
particularly, France.
The best known group comprised French merchants earlier tempted to San
Francisco by the California gold rush beginning 1848 and then come north, some of
them with goods in tow, in response to its British Columbia counterpart a decade
1
I am also not considering early ranchers of French descent, as with Victor Guillaume born in Ohio who
used French as his first language. For a succinct introduction to early Okanagan ranchers born in Quebec,
see Robert M. Hayes, “Kelowna’s French Heritage,” in Our History Our Heritage: One Hundred Stories
Celebrating One Hundred Years of Kelowna and District History (Kelowna: Kelowna Branch, Okanagan
Historical Society, 2004), 120-22.
2
later. They not only set up shops in Victoria, which was the entryway to the
goldfields, but founded there a French-language newspaper and other amenities.2
While most Frenchmen and others heading to the goldfields extending from
the Fraser Valley in a broad swath across the interior left once they realized they
were not going to get rich quick, a minority held on. For the hard working and
determined who did so, occupational alternatives to be pursued included packing in
goods, running way houses, setting up lumber and flour mills using water power,
and supplying foodstuffs by farming or ranching, or both. The latter possibilities
were encouraged by its being possible from 1860 onwards to take up land not
occupied by indigenous peoples or others by staking it out and registering the claim,
as opposed to having to be rich enough to purchase it outright.
The general perspective has been, quite accurately, that the overwhelming
majority of gold miners or others who turned to ranching were either Americans
who earlier drove cattle north from the more densely settled American Pacific
Northwest or Englishmen sometimes linked to the colonial government in charge
prior to British Columbia’s becoming a Canadian province in 1871. Such men’s
operating the overwhelming majority of the almost 300 ranches established by
1871 did not, however, preclude others from doing the same.3
In searching out Frenchmen who along with the Guichons might be termed
ranchers, it is important to keep in mind that the geographical boundaries of today’s
France were not wholly in place. The half dozen men I have variously come across
make this point.4
British Colonist, August 11, 1865, reported “50 of our French citizens” going on a picnic excursion. As of
1881 43 persons born in France lived, likely still lived, in Victoria, another 18 elsewhere on Vancouver
Island. Vancouver Island History project, courtesy of John Lutz.
3
One of the most useful general sources on the topic is Gregory E.G. Thomas, “The British Columbia
Ranching Economy, 1858-1896” (MA thesis, History, University of British Columbia, 1976), available on
the web. Thomas counts 285 ranches by 1871 (75-6).
4
Jean Barman, “Lost Okanagan: In Search of the First Settler Families,” Okanagan History 60 (1996), 820; French Canadians, Furs, and Indigenous Women: The Pacific Northwest Reconsidered (Vancouver:
UBC Press, forthcoming). Other possibilities for the list include Jules Blondeaux, Augustus Gillard, and
François Ortolon, all given in the 1881 census as born in France and enumerated as farmer next to each
other (100-102) in the Okanagan Valley. Indicative of the complexities, Eli Lequime, enumerated nearby
(104), was similarly described as a farmer. Not far away was George Keefer, similarly described as born in
France and a Catholic (109). Blondeaux and Gillard, who were enumerated in 1881 as single men, were
from Doubs along the French border with Switzerland.
2
3
Indicative of the complexities in distinguishing French ranchers is early cattle
drover Antoine Minnaberriet, whose Basque Ranch near Spence’s Bridge honoured
his birthplace on the border between France and Spain.
Joseph Haller, founder of the OK Ranch at Big Bar about 140 kilometres
south of Williams Lake in the Cariboo, described himself in the early censuses, as did
his death certificate, as a Frenchman born in Alsace, and so he not unexpectedly
corresponded in German with his family, who had emigrated to Pennsylvania.5
Amadee Isnardy set down just south of Williams Lake on what would be his
combined store and Chimney Creek Ranch in 1862, just two years after his
hometown of Nice on the Mediterranean was annexed from Italy by France. Isnardy
had been brought up as French, in which language he appears to have written, as
with a request of 1871 respecting his property.
French identity is more straightforward with Isidore Boucherie, a merchant’s
son from north of Montpelier who in 1861 took up land on Okanagan Lake at the
future Kelowna, where he raised stock for sale to nearby ranchers on what was
sometimes termed a farm and sometimes a ranch.
Boucherie’s Okanagan neighbor and fellow stock raiser Eli Lequime from
Bordeaux arrived in 1860 with his French wife at the behest of local French Oblate
priest Father Pandosy. A leading local businessman by virtue of his store, Lequime
built up a herd of 1,300 cattle on his over 2,000 acres of bottom land and another
6,000 acres higher up, which equates with his also being a rancher of some reupute.6
Then there is Isadore Versepuech from St. Hypolite in south central France
who left his mark on Dog Creek about 80 kilometres south of Williams Lake not only
as the earliest flour and lumber miller and as a rancher, but also by his selfproclaimed and largely accepted status as a French count. Versepuech, sometimes
known as Gaspard, evoked that identity so persuasively not only do local histories
5
British Columbia, Division of Vital Statistics, Death registration 1900-69484, BCARS, GR2951. Later
sources describe Haller as a “Pensylvania Dutchman,” likely being where his family earlier emigrated.
Among those doing so, Alan Fry, The Ranch on the Cariboo (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1962), 1.
Haller’s birth is in France is attested his plaint in a letter about not having “no time to write to France.” See
Joseph Haller to mother, brothers and sisters, Lillooet, 25 April 1865, City of Vancouver Archives, 1958206.
6
Sharron J. Simpson, The Kelowna Story: An Okanagan History (Madeira Park BC: Harbour, 2011), 33.
4
take it for granted, but descendants of neighbors I have talked to were absolutely
convinced Versepuech was, and I quote, “a real life French count.”7 A local legend
describes his resourcefully trading his tricornered hat and blue satin jacket from the
Court of Louis XVI to local Chief Alexis for a tidy band of sturdy horses.8
As these six vignettes suggest, not only was it ambiguous as to whether some
men considered themselves French or not, but also the line between being a rancher
and a farmer, or a shopkeeper or miller and a rancher or farmer, was porous. If the
criteria be making a living at least in part by raising cattle for sale, then all six were
ranchers of a sort. The bottom line was men during these years, be they Frenchmen
or not, did what they could, and all they could, to survive as best they could.
These half dozen French or semi-French ranchers shared an important
attribute making for success, at least over the short term.9 All or almost all having
arrived via California, they were by the time they reached British Columbia
tempered in frontier ways and looking to the future.10 As of 1858 Haller was 22,
Versepuech 27, Isnardy a couple of years older, Minnaberriet is his 30s, and
Boucherie his early and Lequime his late 40s. Their turn to ranching was no
accident, but conscious intent to use the gold rush as a springboard to better
themselves.
We come to understand how this process worked via Haller’s letters home,
which have quite remarkably survived. He recounts in the spring of 1859 how he
had by gold mining, and I quote, “saved $700 so far,” and by fall of that year “$1400
altogether.” 11 The next spring he and five others used their savings to buy donkeys
to pack goods into the Cariboo, and by 1862 he had a store which put him in, and I
quote again, “about 5 thousand dollars debt now but the grub [8,000 lbs. of flour,
600 lbs. pork, 90 gallons schnapps of different kinds [being flavoured alcoholic
drinks German in origin, hence reflecting his double origins] … all kinds of clothes
7
Conversation with Hilary and Rita Place, Vancouver, 19 May 1998.
Peter Charles, Peter, At the ’47 Mile’: A History of the Village of Clinton (Winnipeg: Hignell, 1990), 40.
9
François Ortolan, who described his birthplace in the census as France, lived in the Okanagan Valley on
what was sometimes termed a farm, other times a ranch. See F.M. Buckland, “From Ranches to Orchards,”
Okanagan Historical Society Report 12 (1948), 90.
10
I am uncertain whether or not Isadore Boucherie was in California.
11
Joseph Haller to mother, brothers and sisters, Somewhere on the Fraser River, September 5, 1858,
and.Cameron Bar, Fraser River, October 17, 1859, City of Vancouver Archives, 1958-206.
8
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for the winter, and various food items] will pay everything and a lot more when all
is sold.” 12 Initially he debated whether or not to sell out and return home, but by
1866 Haller had decided to stay and took up land nearby that would become the
basis of the OK Ranch. According to a son: “He erected a home of hewn logs, built a
small sawmill, making all the machinery himself, save the saw which he brought. He
erected a grist mill and ground wheat into flour and cracked wheat. He had a
blacksmith shop, made wagons and sleighs, and traded with the Indians and settlers.
He had a farm of 160 acres, grew hay and vegetables, and had a French coach
stallion and a Clydesdale, and also bred saddle-horses. He also had very fine cattle,
red and roan…. He had three dams built on the creek, and a couple of them are still
standing. He used the dammed water for irrigation and to run the sawmill.”13 The
enterprising Haller may not have been the largest rancher around, but he was in
terms of his activities a rancher, at the least on the margins of being one. When he
died in 1900, his estate consisted of the single piece of land and $4,500 worth of
goods.14
Once we turn to the Guichons, we became aware of four important factors
contributing to their success that distinguished them in whole or part from the
others. These four – prior experience in British Columbia, astute marital decision
making, occupational persistence, and generational continuity -- each help to
explain why today the Guichons’ ranch still operates, while the other six have all
disappeared.
First, the four Guichon brothers had prior experience in British Columbia in
ways that when they turned to ranching favoured them over the long run. As did
some of the others, rather than sticking to the first or second place on which they
lighted, the Guichons moved about until they were sure of the best bet. It would be
Joseph Guichon who would successfully ranch with a line of descent continuing into
the present day.
12
Joseph Haller to mother, brothers and sisters, Lillooet, November 6, 1862, City of Vancouver Archives,
1958-206. No letters survive after 1866
13
Conversation with Edward James Haller by Major J.S. Matthews, 16 May 1958, CVA.
14
Joseph Haller, will, BC Archives, GR1304, box 99, file 2304.
6
First-hand accounts by Joseph’s son Lawrence, his grandson Gerard, and
great grandson Guy Rose make it possible to know quite a lot about the family from
their perspectives. 15 Given none of them validate the brothers by their
backgrounds in France, it is likely their upbringings in Chambery, Savoie, being
territory which like Nice where Isnardy grew up was ceded to France by Italy only
in 1860, were fairly ordinary. Joseph’s three older brothers – Charles, Laurent, and
Pierre -- headed to California in 1857, only to find themselves too late to get rich and
so came north to British Columbia, where they eventually traded their gold claims
for packing goods into the Cariboo on mules, much like Haller.
Youngest brother Joseph, who arrived in 1864 aged 21 about the time the
oldest brother Charles returned to France, gained valuable experience by working
for Minnaberriet on the Basque Ranch and then for longtime packer Jean Caux
known as Cataline by virtue of his birth in the Catalan Pyrenees between France and
Spain. Using his savings to buy cattle, in 1868 Joseph acquired a piece of land to put
them, which he then sold in favour of a more suitable area for grazing cattle over the
winter lying between Kamloops and Merritt, of which he had become aware while
packing. As his grandson explained, “the way they found this part of the country
was in looking for wintering and feed for packhorses.” Joseph took up land there in
1873, which likely precipitated his two brothers selling out their packing business
to do the same. The gold rush was in any case winding down, and ranching had by
now proven its worth.
The Guichons benefited in comparison to the others by being latecomers not
only to ranching, but also, secondly, in respect to their personal lives by virtue of
15
Information on the Guichons comes principally from the second-, third-, and fourth-generation first-hand
accounts by Lawrence Guichon, interview with Thomas Garnet Willis, Supt of Experimental Farm in
Kamloops, ca 1960, BC Archives, T4144:0001; and by Gerard Guichon, interview with Imbert Orchard,
June 27, 1964, BC Archives, T0403; Gerard Guichon with Sandra Klein, “The Guichon Family,” Nicola
Valley Historical Quarterly 11, 1 (August 1993): 1-12; Gerard Guichon, “On Education,” Nicola Valley
Historical Quarterly 1, 3 (July 1978): 8; and the interviews with Guy Rose recounted in Doug Cox,
Ranching Now, Then, and Way Back When (Penticton: Skookum, 2004), 171-73; Iaian McIntyre, “Staying
Home on the Ranch,” Vancouver Sun, March 1, 2003; “Quilchena Hotel: 100 years of stories,” Vancouver
Sun, April 26, 2008; Danielle Egan, “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?” BC Business, July 1, 2008;
Tammy Thielman, “Quilchena Ranch – 1882 to 2001,” Cowboylife online; also Rick Blacklaws and Diana
French, Ranchland: British Columbia’s Cattle Country (Madeira Park: Harbour, 2001), 73-79.
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holding out for -- or simply being fortunate to acquire -- respectable white wives
putting them attune with the emerging dominant society.
In sharp contrast, with the exception of Lequime who arrived with a French
wife, the others all turned to indigenous women. That they did so is not surprising,
given as Haller who we know from his letters home left behind a “sweetheart”
explained, “there are only Indian women” here.16 Haller’s was a bit of an
overstatement, but not much given the gendered nature of the fur trade and then
the gold rush, making it unsurprising his first of four sons and a daughter by an
woman named in Catholic records as Betzy or Sakstem was born in 1870, to be
followed by another five with the daughter of a likely American miner and an
indigenous woman.17 Boucherie wed a Penticton woman named Marianne Jentit-k
in 1869, Isnardy a Lillooet chief’s daughter named Juliene Willamatkwa in 1873,
Versepuech a local woman named Marguerite Mootla in 1882 at the urging of the
Catholic nuns running the school his children attended. Minnaberriet fathered a son
with an indigenous woman prior to wedding a French woman by birth or descent,
which may help explain his decision of 1883 to sell the Basque Ranch in favour of
returning home to France with his family.18
These early French ranchers were not unique. How they acted paralleled
numerous others, including some of the most prominent of British and American
background. As put by ranching historian Ken Mather, “a list of the ranchers who
lived with Native women reads like a who’s who of the early ranching community.”19
Some relationships held on, but others deteriorated as men moved on from their
children’s mothers, which non-Catholics less affected by religious scruples had likely
16
On his sweetheart at home, Joseph Haller to mother, brothers and sisters, Sacramento, March 29 and
April 28, 1858, and Cameron Bar, August 24, 1866; on Indian women, Joseph Haller to mother, brothers
and sisters, Big Bar Creek, December 26, 1965, all City of Vancouver Archives, 1958-206.
17
Baptisms, St. Joseph’s Mission, Williams Lake, 1866-1901, computerized list compiled by Brother Eddy
Sykes, St. Joseph Oblate House, Williams Lake, and used at Oblate House, Vancouver, 2-4 September
1998, courtesy of Brother Frances McDonald.
18
Inland Sentinel, June 21, 1883.
19
Ken Mather, Buckaroos and Mud Pups: The Early Days of Ranching in British Columbia (Vancouver:
Heritage, 2007), 66.
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not married, to a white woman as with Minneaberriot or part-white woman in the
pattern of Haller. 20
The hard decisions Frenchmen made as whether to honour the indigenous
women in their lives by Catholic marriage in the tradition of their upbringings is
caught in a nun’s account respecting Versepuech. “Long he resisted Sister’s
representations of the rights he owed to God, to his squaw, to his children, and to his
soul. Finally, he yielded to the point of compromise. He said, ‘I will submit the
woman to a trial and see if she is worthy of the legal tie.’ One evening, when in his
home, he sat down in the presence of his native partner, the mother of his children,
and, with great show, began to write a letter. Naturally, she asked to whom he was
writing. Rather crossly, the French nobleman answered, ‘I am going to get a wife
from France; you can go where you please.’ The poor discarded creature took the
cruel affront very meekly. Quietly, without a word of reproach, she continued her
accustomed domestic work. The test had continued a month when, one evening, the
man asked her what she intended to do when his future wife came. She replied
softly that she would take her children and remove to another place. His man heart
was touched by so peaceful an adjustment. He rewarded the squaw’s forbearance
by saying, ‘You are my wife forever; I never had any other in mind. The priest will
bless our marriage.’” 21
In sharp contrast to these toings-and-froings, about the time the middle
Guichon brother Pierre died single in 1878, Joseph and Laurent accomplished the
remarkable feat of snaring not only French but Savoie-born wives in a province
where non-indigenous women of any kind were still in short supply. Across British
Columbia at the time of the first provincial census in 1881, there were four
newcomer men for every newcomer woman, with proportions even more skewed in
areas of the gold rush.22
Gregory E.G. Thomas, “The British Columbia Ranching Economy, 1858-1896” (MA thesis, History,
University of British Columbia, 1976), 184-85, makes the general point.
21
Sister Mary Theodore, Pioneer Nuns of British Columbia: Sisters of St. Ann (Victoria: Colonist
Publishing, 1931), 72.
22
Jean Barman, The West beyond the West: A History of British Columbia, 3rd ed. (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 2007), table 11 on 435.
20
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The impetus to the Guichon brothers’ unions lay in the older brother of their
future wives, part of a family that had recently emigrated from France to Quebec,
heading west to farm. As Joseph Guichon’s grandson Gerard put it, “both speaking
French they got to know each other.” Joseph Rey’s family soon followed him to
British Columbia.
So it was in 1878, 35-year-old Joseph Guichon wed 22-year-old Josephine
Rey. And the next spring Joseph’s 43-year-old brother Laurent married her 23-yearold sister Peronne, both unions taking place in Victoria near where the Rey parents
had settled.
The Guichon brothers thereby ensured their respectability in the emerging
dominant society, including with the provincial government in respect to special
concessions sometimes available to those in the know who might include the
Guichons and possibly Lequime.23 To the extent the others were affected it was
most likely in respect the newly established syndicates backed by outside finance
for the purpose of buying up and consolidating smaller ranches. Among those so
acquired would be Boucherie’s modest 160 acres and 230 head of cattle in 1891 and
in 1904 Lequime’s much larger ranch, which he had sold off to his three sons on
retiring to San Francisco in 1888. 24
The two Guichon brothers also succumbed to syndicates. Amidst some land
swapping, they had built up a herd of 1,400 cattle they sold in the early 1880s along
with their land to the syndicate that would shortly form the Douglas Lake Ranch,
still a force in the British Columbia interior.
Thence comes my third factor, persistence, in respect both to ranching and, it
turns out, to farming. Older brother Laurent used the proceeds from the sale to
move nearer his wife’s family on the more settled and sedate coast. He had, while
packing in the early 1860s, gotten to know Cornishman William Ladner, also
See Gregory E.G. Thomas, “The British Columbia Ranching Economy, 1858-1896” (MA thesis, History,
University of British Columbia, 1976), 122 and 233-34, fn 120, for a list of 34 ranchers taking advantage of
a leasing/purchasing land act passed in 1885, which includes Laurent Guichon and Lequime, but none of
the others.
24
Robert M. Hayes, “Kelowna’s French Beginnings,” Kelowna Daily Courier, November 26, 1999; and
Robert M. Hayes, “Eli Lequime deservedly named ‘King of the Okanagan,’,” Kelowna Daily Courier,
December 1, 2000.
23
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packing in the Cariboo, but soon farming in the fertile Fraser River delta. Ladner
persuaded Laurent to purchase 1,000 acres of farmland adjacent to his own, where
the older Guichon brother drew on his ranching credentials to keep a large herd of
dairy cattle for milk and butter, grow hay and grain, and build his wife and family a
splendid home. 25
Joseph Guichon was in contrast, in his grandson’s words, despite his wife’s
similar persuasion, and I quote, “to get back more to civilization…determined to stay
put in the interior.” Drawing on his ranching experience, he built up a successful
operation in the Nicola Valley. In doing so, he may also have had luck on his side,
given, his son Lawrence born in 1879 recounted in old age, “unless you get the snow
or the rain, man is pretty hopeless.”
Both Lawrence and Gerard Guichon describe in some detail precisely how
their father and grandfather persisted with the ups and downs, which included
opening a hotel in 1908 that, if closed for a time, continues in operation. At Joseph
Guichon’s death in 1921, according to his entry in the Dictionary of Canadian
Biography, “the Guichon lands included nearly 40,000 acres of deeded land in
addition to leases on over half a million acres of crown land” for pasture, a
provincial practice that had assisted ranchers in the know since 1865.26 In 1957 the
Guichon ranch would be divided between two third-generation descendants into its
present composition: Gerard Guichon as Gerard Guichon Ranch Limited and Guy
Rose as the Quilchena Cattle Company Limited.27
The fourth and final factor distinguishing the Guichons is, as the ranch’s
division in 1957 attests, generational continuity. Not only did Joseph Guichon’s
ranch continue in operation, his brother Laurent’s Fraser delta holding similarly
passed down to be farmed today by descendants in the fifth generation. The farm’s
“Port Guichon’s History,” online at deltasd.bc.ca; Jacqueline Gresko, “William Henry Ladner,”
Dictionary of Canadian Biography online.
26
John Douglas Belshaw, “Joseph Guichon,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography online; on the leasing
practice Gregory E.G. Thomas, “The British Columbia Ranching Economy, 1858-1896” (MA thesis,
History, University of British Columbia, 1976), 122.
27
Gerard Guichon with Sandra Klein, “The Guichon Family,” Nicola Valley Historical Quarterly 11, 1
(August 1993): 12; Guy Rose in Doug Cox, Ranching Now, Then, and Way Back When (Penticton:
Skookum, 2004), 172
25
11
1,700 acres were as of 2008 considered to be “the largest soil-based farming
operation in B.C.,” being dedicated to growing vegetables for supermarkets.28
None of the other six ranches has survived. To the extent sons persisted,
they were for all of their hard work tainted from the perspective of newcomers by
their maternal descent. Even though several of the families, including the
Versepueches and Isnardys, similarly educated their offspring in Catholic schools as
did the Guichons, they did not measure up.
Some sons followed their fathers into ranching, proudly if sometimes
modestly and at the margins. Haller’s seven sons were described as farm or other
labourers or as ranch hands. Given the large size of the ranches Versepuech and
Isnardy assembled, their four sons were generally termed ranchers or farmers in
respect to sometimes smallish holdings.
The six French ranchers’ way of life also lives on in an unexpected way.
Louis, the child Antoine Minnaberriet left behind when he returned to France in
1883, was sent to school in New Westminster by his stepfather, Frenchman Peter
Audap who farmed at 89 Mile on the Cariboo Road. It was thence that in due course
Minnaberriet’s outwardly indigenous great great grandson Percy along with Percy’s
son Victor Minnaberriet, operate, very much like their long ago antecedent, a cattle
operation near Ashcroft.29
Very importantly and I want to close with this point, the Guichons’ ranching
success and the more modest accomplishments of their six counterparts did not
override or negate their French inheritances. Likely emblematic of the others,
Joseph Guichon was, on the one hand, as described by his eldest son Lawrence, “an
optimist and lover of B.C. and Canada,” and also was, on the other, very much a
Frenchman.
These French ranchers variously employed their inheritances. When Joseph
Guichon arrived, it was to Minnaberriot and Cataline he turned for employment, and
then to a French woman when it came to marriage. While at least some of Joseph
Peter Guichon in “Fifth Generation Farmers,” Delta Optimist, October 10, 2007.
“Percy Minnabarriet” in Rick Blacklaws and Diana French, Ranchland: British Columbia’s Cattle
Country (Madeira Park: Harbour, 2001), 51.
28
29
12
and Laurent’s children married non-French women, his fellow ranchers’ offspring
often did not. Versepuech’s son Alfred wed Haller’s daughter Mary, his daughters
Julia and Matilda respectively Isnardy’s younger brother Louis recently arrived from
France and the son of an Alsatian come with the gold rush.
Affinity also linked offspring with the sons of continental Europeans and
indigenous women. An Isnardy son wed a daughter of Holstein-born Herman Otto
Bowe said to have been the earliest rancher in colonial British Columbia, a Haller
daughter a son of Hanover-born farmer Conrad Kostering, and a Haller son and
daughter offspring of Genoa-born rancher Augustine Boitano. The other direction
was toward French Canadians, particularly in the early Okanagan who two of the
Lequime sons so married.30
The Catholic religion originating with French descent also made a difference
as to how men and their offspring enacted their lives. It was not only a matter of
adherence, as with Lequime’s arrival in the Okanagan at the behest of the local
priest, and of church attendance and children’s schooling, but also of respect for the
three critical stages of the life cycle of baptism, marriage, and death. Versepuech’s
decision to wed the indigenous mother of his children exemplifies a larger point
having to do with the behavior of French ranchers as opposed to their American and
English counterparts. By virtue of being wed to the indigenous women in their lives,
these Frenchmen did not, when it became possible demographically to do so, move
on to marriages productive of white offspring who then became their legitimate
ranching heirs.
It was also in business that the French connection mattered. The ambitious
Amadee Isnardy, who as we saw earlier appears to have been literate in French,
early on sent back home for two of his acquaintances to help run his ranch, only for
them to be killed on their way by indigenous peoples after misunderstanding his
travel instructions. When in 1894 Joseph Guichon decided to improve the quality of
his cattle, it was from Quebec he imported the purebred Holsteins that would
30
Bernard Lequime, “Over the Penticton Trail,” Okanagan History 7 (1937): 19-20.
13
become the backbone of the ranch’s herd.31 In business going in the other direction,
during the First World War the French army is said to have come to the Guichon
ranch to buy quarter horses for cavalry and artillery units.32
Nowhere perhaps did Frenchness more matter than with inheritance. When
Laurent Guichon died in 1902, his nine children, according to a descendant, each
received 150 acres of his land holdings.33 On Joseph Guichon’s retirement from
ranching in 1918, he similarly divided his property according to French custom
between his three sons and four daughters. Also in French fashion, Isnardy’s large
ranch was on his death in 1907 by his will, and to some extent earlier on as offspring
came of age, divided between his four sons and two daughters. 34
Thinking back a century and a half in time, the role played by Frenchmen in
early British Columbia ranching is to some extent in the eyes of the beholder, and
what you have is my perspective. Nothing much would likely have changed in the
broader picture had the Guichons and the others not turned in that direction. They
at the same time each contributed to the larger whole that was early ranching and
enriched the province we know today, none more so than the Guichons with their
combination of prior experience, astute marital decision making, occupational
persistence, and generational continuity sustaining them into the present day.
John Douglas Belshaw, “Joseph Guichon,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography online.
“Quichena Hotel: 100 Years of Stories,” Vancouver Sun, April 26, 2008, based on an interview with
descendant Guy Rose.
33
Peter Guichon in “Fifth Generation Farmers,” Delta Optimist, October 10, 2007.
34
“Isnardy family gather at Alexis Creek,” Williams Lake Tribune, October 18, 1972.
31
32