Gilles Hocquart no doubt struck terror into the hearts of some of the defaulters at Montreal on July 22, 1730, when he ordered all the merchants and other business men without exception to repair immediately to the Governor of Montreal to have their weights and measures reformed, verified, sealed and marked with the fleur de lis. Although there had been legislation before, still complaints had been brought to him that there was wanting uniformity in the city on this hand, some giving too short measure and others, strangely, too long. Two years later, on August 9, 1732, Hocquart did the same good turn for Quebec. In business methods Montrealers like to be pioneers and it is to be noticed that the preamble of this ordonnance Hocquart gives as a reason for the new move, the success at Montreal, "ainsi que nous l'avons pratiqué pour la ville de Montréal."
In 1731 Montreal traders sent out the Chevalier Varennes de la Vérendrye to hunt, trade and to find the Pacific. In 1735 he built Fort Rouge, on the site of the City of Winnipeg and in 1743 he and his sons were the first white men to see the Rocky Mountains.
A decree of February 19, 1732, strikes a blow at the system of religious asylum being granted to fugitives from justice. "We forbid all curés, ecclesiastics, and secular and regular communities of either sex, harbouring or giving asylum to all deserters, vagabonds and persons charged with crimes, under penalty of loss of our favour, and of the seizure of their property and of deprivation of their privileges."
About 1736 the first sailing vessel on Lake Superior was constructed and furnished through Montreal commercial enterprise. [178]
In a letter, dated October 22, 1730, it is mentioned that Governor Beauharnois had that spring sent orders to the officer commanding Chouamigon (La Plante) to make an examination of the copper mine alleged to have been discovered in the vicinity. Nothing very satisfactory eventuated. The Sieur Denys de la Ronde, who succeeded as commandant, had faith, however, in the mines and had obtained a concession to work copper mines at Lake Superior. In 1736, a son of de la Ronde, visited an isle in search of copper. De la Ronde, the father, in 1740, on his way to La Pointe, was taken sick at Mackinac and returned to Montreal, but he did not despair of finding valuable copper mines. The colonial officers, in a dispatch, wrote as to de la Ronde, that "this officer has been ordered with his son to build at the River Ste. Anne, a house of logs 200 feet long, with a fort and curtain, which he assures us he has executed. He has had other expenses on account of the mines, such as the voyage and presents for the Indians. He has constructed, at his own expense, a bark of forty tons on Lake Superior, and was obliged to transport the rigging and materials for the vessel as far as Sault Ste. Marie in canoes. The post of Chouamigon was given to him as gratuity to defray expenses. A merchant of Montreal, named Charley St. Ange, furnished de la Ronde with goods, and miners named Forestier were employed in prospecting."
To the date of 1742 belong the following sidelight of the methods of execution of justice:
"Under the title of 'The Outraged Crucifix,' in the 'Choses et Autres,' of M. Faucher de St. Maurice, an interesting historical sidelight is given of the first half of the eighteenth century, of a charge of sorcery, magic and sacrilege in Montreal against a soldier named Flavart de Beaufort, then belonging to the garrison. He was a "farceur," who had only wished to amuse himself at the expense of the credulity of the poor. But as the good Montrealers of the period did not suffer any ridicule of holy things, the affair had a tragic ending.
On August 27, 1742, the King's procurator brought him in guilty under the three heads of accusation,—sorcery, magic, and sacrilege,—and demanded that in fitting reparation Charles François Flavart de Beaufort should be condemned "in his shirt, the rope round his neck, holding between his hands a torch of burning wax of the weight of two pounds, bare-headed and on his knees, before the great door and the principal entrance of the parish church of this town, on the first day of the market, to say and to declare aloud and intelligibly, that wickedly and ill advised he had profaned the words of Our Lord Jesus Christ Crucified for the purposes of divination ... and moreover he is condemned to be beaten and whipped with rods, through the squares and public thoroughfare of this town and to be banished from the boundaries of this jurisdiction for three years and be held to keep his ban.
"On the 30th these conclusions were ratified by the judgment of the court of Montreal, which further added that "Flavart de Beaufort should be conducted by the hangman, the 'executeur de haute justice,' bearing the inscription in front and behind—'Profaner of Holy things,'—This done, we have condemned him to serve as a convict in the galleys of the King for the space of five years.
"(Signed) Guiton de Monrepos."