Esther Brandeau (flor. in Canada 1738–39) is notable in the history of the Jews in Canada as the first Jew to set foot in the country, travelling from France to New France.[1]
She was born around 1718, probably at Saint-Esprit-lès-Bayonne (near Bayonne), in the diocese of Dax.[2] Jews in France were subject to waves of expulsion, and women's lives were limited by gender roles, which some tried to evade by cross-dressing. Brandeau reinvented herself as Jacques La Fargue, a Roman Catholic boy, and became a sailor on the St-Michel, a ship bound from Bordeaux for the Port of Quebec.[3] At that time, Canada was the only colony of the New World never reported to have been visited by a Jew.[4]
After a brief masquerade, Esther's religion and sex were both discovered. As a non-Catholic in a legally Catholic country, she was arrested on the orders of Gilles Hocquart, Intendant of New France, and taken to the Hôpital Général in Quebec City. Hocquart was initially under the impression that Brandeau wished to convert to Catholicism and remain in the colony. However, later he wrote to the minister in France that conversion attempts had failed: she desired to live in Canada as a Jew. The government decided on deportation, and after correspondence with authorities in France, she was sent back home on a ship named Comte de Matignon at the expense of the State.[2] After Brandeau's deportation to France, nothing more is known about her life.[5]