François Havy (1709 – December 12, 1766) was a French merchant who operated in

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

. Havy managed the Quebec business of the French shipping firm Dugard et Cie. While the company's Quebec activities were modest when Havy first established the office in 1732, by 1741 he was handling a full fifth of the colony's imports. They oversaw the construction of six ships for the company. His assistant was his cousin

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, with whom he formed a partnership to pursue other business opportunities while retaining their positions at Dugard et Cie. Eventually, Dugard et Cie's ships were lost to privateers or storms and the firm withdrew from Canada. Lefebvre and Havy's business grew steadily, as they personally handled cargos and eventually came to own a small ship of their own, the ''Parfaite Union''. They experienced a setback when they invested in a sealing station in

Labrador , nickname = "The Big Land" , etymology = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Canada , subdivision_type1 = Province , subdivision_name1 ...

with Louis Bazil and

Louis Fornel Louis Fornel (August 20, 1698 – May 30, 1745) was a Canadian merchant, explorer, and seigneur in New France. Involved in maritime trade and both born and married into prominent Quebec families, Louis Fornel was among the partners Louis Bazil co ...

, and retained their interest in it until the 1745 capture of the

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by Anglo-Americans cut them off from it. They lost about a third of their original 100,000 livre investment. In 1756, partly out of a desire to marry (as a

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, he could not do so in Quebec) and partly motivated by the looming threat of the Seven Years' War, Havy returned to France to oversee the transfer of as much of the business as possible there. When the British captured Quebec in 1759 much of his and Lefebvre's assets in New France – in mortgages, Canadian paper money, and

bills of exchange A negotiable instrument is a document guaranteeing the payment of a specific amount of money, either on demand, or at a set time, whose payer is usually named on the document. More specifically, it is a document contemplated by or consisting of a ...

– were declared worthless by the new government. However, the pair joined with another cousin, François Levesque, as a partner to conclude what business remained, and Levesque carried on as a merchant in British Canada for some time.

References

* * People of New France 1709 births 1766 deaths Pre-Confederation Canadian businesspeople French merchants 18th-century Canadian businesspeople {{Canada-business-bio-stub, Havy, François