Joseph Boucher de Niverville may have been the organizer of an expedition by New France soldiers into what is today's Alberta.
This was in 1751.
The location of the fort they built -- Fort La Jonquière -- is unknown.
Some place it in Saskatchewan at the Forks of the Saskatchewan where the North and South Saskatchewan join, 50 kms east of Prince Albert, SK.
This would put it in the vicinity of Nipawin, SK today.
Others say it may have been as far west as the present site of Edmonton or Calgary.
If it was Calgary, they likely saw the Rockies.
If it was either Calgary or Edmonton (or some place a ways upstream of the Forks of the Saskatchewan, either on the North or South Sask. rivers) they were the first people of European stock to visit Alberta (that we know of anyway),
They would have visited Alberta prior to Anthony Henday's known arrival, three years later.
Later arrivals at Calgary and at Edmonton circa 1870s/1880s found ruins of early forts or trading posts at both those locations. But there was no information on who had built them. Could they have been 200 years old? Possibly. In most cases the ruin of an old fort was merely cellar holes and piles of stone from thrown-down chimneys. Those kind of things might last a century for clever eyes.
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from MacGregor A History of Alberta:
Three years before Henday came to call on Alberta's Blackfoot, the French had built the strictly temporary Fort La Jonquiere in Saskatchewan, somewhere below the junction of the North and South Saskatchewan rivers [east of the AB-SK border] and in 1753 [one year prior to Henday's visit] a permanent well-oganized Fort St. Louis [Fort de la Corne] on the main river north of modern Kinistino.
The time had come when Alberta's [First Nations], instead of merely feeling the effects of the white man's good, werr soon to see trading posts erected in their midst." (p. 26)
But even though we telescope decades together when we look at history, the first fort built on the Saskatchewan River system inside Alberta would not be until 1792 (HBC's Buckingham House and NWC's Fort George, where Dogrump River flows into the N. Sask., near today's town of Elk Point).
Through the late 1700s and the early part of the 1800s, forts were built along the N. Saskatchewan River where its tributaries flowed in, with only one known exception - Fort Edmonton and Fort Augustus was built in today's Rossdale in downtown Edmonton in 1812. It seems that location was chosen, despite not having the mouth of a tributary, because that was where the Old North Trail (Wolf's Trail) crossed the N. Sask. River.
see separate Montopedia blog on the North Trail...
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from DCB online:
Joseph Boucher de Niverville (1715-1804)
...
Shortly after his return to Montreal [1749/1750], he was ordered by Governor Jacques-Pierre de Taffanel* de La Jonquière to join an expedition set up under Jacques Legardeur* de Saint-Pierre to search for the western sea. The party left Montreal early in June 1750 and reached Fort La Reine (Portage la Prairie, Man.) that autumn.
Niverville was to establish a new post west of Fort Paskoya (Le Pas, Man.) to serve as a base for an expedition west towards the Rockies, and he set out again almost immediately.
On 29 May 1751 he dispatched two canoes with ten men from Fort Paskoya; he became seriously ill, however, and was unable to join them as he had intended.
His men built Fort La Jonquière (probably in the vicinity of Nipawin, SK), [and waited for him to come, then] returned to Paskoya, [finding] Niverville was still in critical condition.
It was not until spring 1753 that he was able to leave the fort.
[he immediately set off to go back to Montreal]
He succeeded in overtaking Legardeur’s party just before it arrived at Lake Superior, and the expedition reached Montreal near the end of the summer without having found the western sea. [but possibly getting as far as Alberta.]
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see Wikipedia: Joseph Boucher de Niverville for more information on this fellow.
Montopedia has a blog on Anthony Henday.
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