CHABOULIÉ (Chaboillez), CHARLES, sculptor and carpenter, son of Jean Chaboulié, sculptor and carpenter, and of Marie Le Hour, of the parish of Saint-Rémi in Troyes (province of Champagne). He was born c. 1638, if we are to believe his death certificate, dated 20 Aug. 1708, in which he was said to be about 70; on the other hand, in the certificate of his marriage on 13 Oct. 1704 to Angélique Dandonneau Du Sablé, who was 21, he admitted to being about 50.

The date of his arrival in Canada is not known. Massicotte has speculated that the founder of the Brothers Hospitallers, François Charon de La Barre, brought him back with him in 1700 after a voyage to France. It is now known that before coming to Montreal Chaboulié spent some years at Quebec and even was almost married there. He probably took part in the construction on the Place d’Armes of the Recollet monastery which began in July 1693, and he certainly had a strong influence on the school of sculpture in that town.

On 6 May 1701 he was at Montreal and put himself at the disposal of the Brothers Hospitallers. At that time Charon perhaps intended to open an arts and crafts school with the help of Chaboulié and Pierre Le Ber. If that was so, his project was not realized, for on 7 May 1702 Chaboulié, whose enthusiasm for his tardily discovered calling had disappeared, entered into partnership with a cousin, Laurent Rousseau, dit Larose, a former sergeant in the colonial regular troops. Rousseau was to farm their land on the côte Saint-Laurent, while Chaboulié would finish the tabernacle in the Recollet chapel. Afterwards they were to live together on the fruits of their respective trades. In 1704 Chaboulié took on Charles Achard as an apprentice and undertook to teach him his sculptor’s art and the carpenter’s trade. Various facts lead us to believe that he was very kind; the inventory of his belongings after his death shows us that he made a comfortable living not only from his sculpture, but also from carpentry.

Chaboulié had friendly connections with the sculptor Noël Levasseur. In 1702, still a bachelor, he undertook to leave all his property to Levasseur’s first-born.

Only remnants of Chaboulié’s work are left. His important works for the chapels of the Hôtel-Dieu and the Congrégation de Notre Dame were destroyed when these buildings were burned, and the Recollets’ tabernacle has disappeared. Some madonnas, one of which is in the Hôtel-Dieu, are attributed to him, as are some turned and carved candlesticks in the Hôpital Général.

His wife remarried in 1710 and about ten years later went to settle in the west; she died in 1764 at Detroit. By her marriage with Chaboulié she had three children, two daughters and a son, Charles, born in 1706, who was to be the forebear of numerous traffickers and later dealers in furs. At least two of them were intimately associated with the great bourgeois of the Compagnie du Nord-Ouest. Among the other prominent members of the family should be mentioned merchant Charles-Jean-Baptiste Chaboillez* and notary Louis Chaboillez*.

Jules Bazin