Étienne Duchesnois (July 9, 1765 – December 16, 1826) was a merchant and political figure in Lower Canada. He represented Surrey in the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada from 1814 to 1824.
The Province of Lower Canada was a British colony on the lower Saint Lawrence River and the shores of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence (1791–1841). It covered the southern portion of the current-day Province of Quebec, Canada, and the Labrador region of the modern-day Province of Newfoundland and Labrador.
The Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada was the lower house of the bicameral structure of provincial government in Lower Canada until 1838. The legislative assembly was created by the Constitutional Act of 1791. The lower house consisted of elected legislative councillors who created bills to be passed up to the Legislative Council of Lower Canada, whose members were appointed by the governor general.
He was born in Berthier, the son of Étienne Duchesnois and Catherine-Françoise Leroux. Duchesnois established himself in business at Varennes. He was also a justice of the peace and a major in the militia. In 1797, he married Josette Massue, the daughter of the seigneur of Varennes, Gaspard Massue, and the sister of Aignan-Aimé Massue and Louis Massue. Duchesnois did not run for reelection in 1824. He died two years later in Varennes at the age of 61.
Varennes is an off-island suburb of Montreal, in southwestern Quebec, Canada, on the Saint Lawrence River in the Marguerite-D'Youville Regional County Municipality. The city is approximately 24 kilometres (15 mi) from Downtown Montreal. The population as of the Canada 2011 Census was 20,994. In 2015, the population is listed at 24,000.
A justice of the peace (JP) is a judicial officer of a lower or puisne court, elected or appointed by means of a commission to keep the peace. In past centuries the term commissioner of the peace was often used with the same meaning. Depending on the jurisdiction, such justices dispense summary justice or merely deal with local administrative applications in common law jurisdictions. Justices of the peace are appointed or elected from the citizens of the jurisdiction in which they serve, and are usually not required to have any formal legal education in order to qualify for the office. Some jurisdictions have varying forms of training for JPs.
The manorial system of New France was the semi-feudal system of land tenure used in the North American French colonial empire.
