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. She was born around 1718, probably at Saint-Esprit-lès-Bayonne (near Bayonne), in the diocese of Dax. 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. At that time, Canada was the only colony of the New World never reported to have been visited by a Jew. 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. After Brandeau's deportation to France, nothing more is known about her life. Historical background Jews in 18th century Europe and European colonies Historically, anti-Semitism was widespread in Christian Europe and European colonies, with many Jews displaced as a result. In the centuries leading up to the 1700s, European Christians widely associated Jews with unfair economic practices such as usury. Medieval prejudices against Jews, such as poisoning water wells to cause the Black Death, persisted in this era as well. Jews were also a popular subject in literature despite making up less than one percent of the French population, although they were often depicted negatively in these works. While Jews had reached the Americas centuries before Esther Brandeau, New France was one of the last places that Jews ever set foot in the Americas chronologically as the colony of New France was officially closed to all non-Catholics. In 1492, the year that the Spanish monarchy expelled Jews from its lands, several Jews joined Christopher Columbus's voyage across the Atlantic