John Le Boutillier or John Le Bouthillier (1797 – July 31, 1872) was a Quebec businessman and political figure. He was born in Jersey in 1797 and came to the

Gaspé peninsula The Gaspé Peninsula, also known as Gaspesia (; ), is a peninsula along the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River that extends from the Matapedia Valley in Quebec, Canada, into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. It is separated from New Brunswick o ...

around 1815 as an employee of

Charles Robin Charles Robin (October 30, 1743 – June 10, 1824) was an entrepreneur from the Isle of Jersey who traded between the maritime region of Canada and the British Isles. Fishery trader He was born in Saint Brélade, Jersey in 1743. By 1763, he was t ...

. In 1830, he opened his own business exporting dried

cod Cod is the common name for the demersal fish genus '' Gadus'', belonging to the family Gadidae. Cod is also used as part of the common name for a number of other fish species, and one species that belongs to genus ''Gadus'' is commonly not call ...

from the Gaspé region and settled in Gaspé. He represented Gaspé in the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada from 1833 to 1838 and then Bonaventure from 1844 to 1847 and Gaspé from 1854 to 1867 in the

Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada The Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada was the lower house of the legislature for the Province of Canada, which consisted of the former provinces of Lower Canada, then known as Canada East and later the province of Quebec, and Upper C ...

. Le Boutillier voted against the Ninety-Two Resolutions. In 1867, he was named to the Legislative Council of Quebec for the Gulf division and served until his death in Gaspé in 1872. His firm, which had grown to 2,500 employees, 12 ships and 169 fishing boats, was taken over by Charles Robin's company after his death. Le Boutillier's final house in Gaspé was later a hospital before being razed in the 1970s against the wishes of preservationists. Another house formerly used by John Le Boutillier Company managers was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1975.

References

* * ¸ 1797 births 1872 deaths Converts to Roman Catholicism from Anglicanism Jersey emigrants to Canada Members of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada from Canada East Members of the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada Conservative Party of Quebec MLCs Immigrants to Lower Canada Pre-Confederation Canadian businesspeople {{Jersey-bio-stub