Return to the Law and the Forging of Social Connections

Back in Montreal after his exile, at the beginning of 1839 George-Étienne CARTIER resumed his earlier career:

“[In 1839] Cartier returned to the practice of law with his brother François-Damien. His great period of activity as a lawyer extended from this year until 1848.”

In the 1840s he continued to develop his professional and social network, which would be the foundation of his social and political advancement until the era after confederation in 1867. This quotation, taken from the biography of the journalist and lawyer Joseph ROYAL, provides a glimpse of this network, built over decades by Cartier:

“In 1857 [Royal] began to study law, articling with the firm of George-Étienne Cartier*, among whose clients were the Sulpicians and the Grand Trunk Railway. Cartier was also leader of the Bleus, or French Canadian Conservatives, to whom Royal would rally in politics and journalism. Indeed, that same year he began writing for La Minerve, Cartier’s organ and Montreal’s leading French-language newspaper.”

To learn more about Cartier’s professional and social connections in the years following the Patriote rebellions, we invite you to explore the following lists of biographies: