Beaumont Edmonton Lac Sainte Anne Legal Morinville Rivière-qui-Barre Saint-Albert Lamoureux Villeneuve

The first French-speakers to live in Edmonton and the surrounding area were the fur trade voyageurs from Eastern Canada and their Métis descendants, who lived near Fort Edmonton, at Lac Ste Anne and after 1860, in the St. Albert region. A few disgruntled gold-diggers from the Caribou fields decided to settle across from Fort Saskatchewan; they named their new home after their family, calling it Lamoureux.

In Edmonton, at the beginning of the 20th century there was plenty of work and many prospective settlers opted for city life. Several wives of homesteaders, upon seeing the rough lifestyle in the country, refused to accompany their spouses and stay in the city where they ran little businesses such as boarding houses.

A good deal of the settlers who came to this region were former French-Canadians from New England and they settled in Beaumont, Morinville, Legal, Rivière-qui-Barre, and others.