Joseph Onesime Poirier (1829–1898)

 Joseph Onesime Poirier (1829–1898)

A French Canadian Voyageur Who Helped Settle Sooke

Joseph Onesime Poirier was born on March 3, 1829, in Quebec, Canada, the son of Jean Baptiste Poirier and Marguerite Boudreau. His life would take him far from his birthplace, across the continent, and into the early history of Vancouver Island.

Like many young French Canadian men of the early nineteenth century, Joseph was drawn westward by the fur trade. French-speaking voyageurs formed the backbone of the trading routes that connected eastern Canada to the vast territories of the west. As a young man, Joseph left Quebec and joined the movement of traders and settlers traveling through the Red River settlement, in present-day Manitoba.

From there he continued south and west to Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River, which at the time served as the western headquarters of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Nearby, a large French Canadian farming community had developed in the Willamette Valley. Many former fur traders had settled there with their Indigenous wives and families.

Everything changed in 1846 when the Oregon Treaty established the border between the United States and British territory. With the Willamette Valley now part of the United States, many French Canadian settlers chose to relocate north into British territory, where Hudson’s Bay Company influence remained strong.

Joseph Poirier joined a group traveling north toward Vancouver Island. Among those traveling with him were members of the Brulé family. Jean Baptiste Brulé and his wife Marguerite, who was from the T’Sou-ke First Nation, eventually settled along the east bank of the Sooke River.

Joseph followed this group to the Sooke area, where he found work falling timber for the sawmill of Captain W. C. Grant, one of the first independent settlers in the region. Like many pioneers, Joseph soon took up land of his own near the Sooke River, in the area later known as Milne’s Landing.

During the Leechtown Gold Rush of 1864, Joseph and members of the Brulé family found opportunity supplying food to miners heading for the gold fields. They rafted sheep and cattle along the river to provide meat for the growing mining population.

Joseph later married Ellen Thomas Brulé, one of the daughters of the Brulé family. Their marriage joined two families who were part of the earliest pioneer settlement of the Sooke region.

Joseph and Ellen built a cabin on the river flats and began raising a family. Over the years they would have fifteen children. Life in this remote settlement required strength and resourcefulness. Joseph became known as a skilled woodsman, hunter, fisherman, and farmer — the kinds of abilities necessary to survive in early Vancouver Island communities.

By the mid-1880s Joseph sold his land near the Sooke River to Edward Milne Sr. and moved his growing family to property near what is now Grant Road and Otter Point Road.

Their children would go on to become deeply rooted in the Sooke community. Many descendants married into other local families, and the Poirier name became connected to a wide network of well-known families in the region.

Joseph Poirier died on March 27, 1898, in the Sooke District of British Columbia. By the time of his death, he had helped establish a large pioneer family whose descendants continued to contribute to the life and development of the region for generations.

Today, the Poirier family name remains an important part of Sooke’s local history, reflecting the story of a young French Canadian who traveled across a continent and helped build a community on the western edge of Canada.