Fort La Jonquière was a French fort built along the Saskatchewan River in the spring of 1751. It was purported to have been the furthest west outpost of New France. The fort was named after the Governor General of New France at the time, Jacques-Pierre de Taffanel de la Jonquière, Marquis de la Jonquière, by Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, western commander of the French (1750-1753). There is no surviving record of its exact location, nor physical evidence, but it was most likely located near Nipawin, Saskatchewan. Construction Fort La Jonquière and Fort de la Corne were the two forts established by the French along the Saskatchewan in the 20 years between the end of La Vérendrye's push west from Lake Superior in 1743 and the fall of New France in 1763. Saint-Pierre was the second of the four western commanders who followed La Vérendrye. According to his memoir he ordered fur trader and explorer Joseph-Claude Boucher, Chevalier de Niverville, to travel 300 lieues (leagues) up the Saskatchewan from Fort Paskoya, thought to be near the sources of the Missouri and streams running west to the Pacific, and build a fort there. Ten Frenchmen in two canoes—Niverville himself was too ill to travel—set out from Fort Paskoya on 29 May 1751. Saint-Pierre's memoirs are the only reference to the fort being named "La Jonquière": Saint-Pierre wrote that he left Fort La Reine on November 14, 1751 to visit Fort La Jonquière, but never reached it. He was stopped along the way by a pair of Frenchmen and four Indians who informed him that Niverville was still ill, and that the "YhachéIllini/Jhatcheouilini" Indians who were to have been his guides through "Kinongeouilini" (Ojibwe) territory were attacked by a band of "Assinibouels" (Assiniboine). Saint-Pierre returned to Fort La Reine to overwinter, in the spring of 1752 was recalled to Canada by the new Governor General the Marquis Duquesne, and died in combat in 1755. Historical record No other period sources substantiate Fort La Jonquière's location. In a 1757 address Louis Antoine de Bougainville, Montcalm's aide-de-camp during the Seven Years' War, listed all of the French "Western Sea" outposts at the time: Saint-Pierre, Saint-Charles, La Reine, Dauphin, Bourbon, Paskoya and des Prairies. Fort La Jonquière was conspicuously absent from his list. After the war Guy Carleton, Governor of Quebec, wrote a letter to Lord Shelburne on 2 March 1768 describing the reach of French