CHABOILLEZ, LOUIS (baptized Joseph-Louis), notary, militia officer, office holder, and politician; b. 14 Oct. 1766 in Montreal, Que., son of merchant Louis-Joseph Chaboillez and Angélique Baby-Chenneville; nephew of Charles-Jean-Baptiste Chaboillez; m. 10 Nov. 1789 Marguerite Conefroy in Pointe-Claire, Que., and they had seven children, five of whom died in infancy; d. 19 July 1813 in Montreal.

Louis Chaboillez belonged to the fourth generation of a family engaged in the fur trade since the early 17th century. He did not, however, continue the family tradition. Rather, on 24 July 1787 he received a commission to practise a notary, and on 1 August Isaac Todd and James McGill called on him to draw up hiring contracts for the west. The preparation of such agreements seems to have been a sort of speciality for Chaboillez, who became the leading Montreal notary in the field; in 1813 hiring contracts form a third of his minute-book, which contains slightly more than 10,000 deeds. He recruited his clientele as much from among independent traders as from British firms such as McTavish, Frobisher and Company, Todd, McGill and Company, or Parker, Gerrard, and Ogilvy.

In 1797 Chaboillez held the rank of captain in Montreal’s 2nd Militia Battalion. On 17 December he was elected a churchwarden of the parish of Notre-Dame, but he resigned on 22 April of the following year, when he was called upon to replace notary Jean-Guillaume De Lisle as clerk of the fabrique. On 22 May 1799 he was appointed a justice of the peace, and in November he became a member of the commission for the building of churches and parsonage houses. Under the name of Mathieu he belonged to the Club des Apôtres, founded that year; the 12 members of the club, which lasted only a few months, were concerned with gastronomy and organized a monthly supper. On 11 Oct. 1802 he was appointed secretary of the commission responsible for repairing Montreal’s fortifications.

In 1804 Chaboillez ran for Montreal East in the elections to the Lower Canadian House of Assembly. Elected along with McGill, he sat until 27 April 1808 and split his votes between the English party and the Canadian party. Thus he fought the bill for financing prisons through import duties [see Jonathan Sewell*], but supported the one on the exclusion of judges from the assembly [see Sir James Henry Craig; Pierre-Amable De Bonne]. During his term the government granted him a commission authorizing him to receive the oath of half-pay officers.

Chaboillez subsequently withdrew from the political scene and continued to practise as a notary. From August 1809 until his death he speculated in building sites in Montreal. There is no inventory of his property, and thus it is impossible to evaluate his fortune and his standard of living.

Céline Cyr