Tim’s other works to date include the book Paddling Across the Peninsula, An Important Cross-Michigan Canoe Route During the French Regime, as well as three monumental double-volume sets. These works are entitled Birchbark Canoes of the Fur Trade; Ft. Pontchartrain at Detroit, A Guide to the Daily Lives of Fur Trade and Military Personnel, Settlers, and Missionaries at French Posts; and Rendezvous at the Straits, Fur Trade and Military Activities at Fort De Buade and Fort Michilimackinac, 1669-1781. For the latter two set of volumes, Tim twice received the prestigious State History Award from the Historical Society of Michigan. Concerning Rendezvous at the Straits, David Armour, long time Deputy Director and Historian of Mackinac State Historic Parks, noted, “Kent has written the only comprehensive overview of the area known as Michilimackinac, focusing equally on both sides of the Straits.”

Among the more than 800 direct French and French Canadian ancestors whom Tim has researched (originating from over 130 communities in France), many were involved in the fur trade of North America, from about 1618 to at least 1758. In addition, other of his forbears served as soldiers in Canada, in the Carignan-Salières Regiment during the 1660s and the Troupes de la Marine in the 1680s and 1690s. The ongoing research on these individuals has already involved visiting in person and researching at each of the 137 ancestral communities which are scattered across the length and breadth of France, as well as at uncounted locales across much of Canada and the U.S. Tim intends to ultimately visit every one of the places where his forbears are known to have lived and labored over the centuries. He also has works in preparation for publication on the very early protohistoric period of the fur trade and the traditional birchbark canoes of the native population of the midwest region. In addition, he has nearly completed a highly detailed study of some five hundred dugout canoes across the U.S. and Canada, ranging from the southern tip of Texas to Nova Scotia to the Yukon, which will result in a major publication of these craft.

Robert Réaume had a particularly distinguished career as a voyageur-trader. Early on, he paddled from Montreal to the Mackinac Straits region to work for investors in 1693-94, 1695-96, and again in 1699. Two years later, in 1701, he again was hired at Montreal, six weeks after Cadillac and his founding brigade has begun to build Ft. Pontchartrain at Detroit. Working with two other trusted voyageur-guides and three soldier paddlers, he transported the wives and children of Cadillac and Tonty to the brand new fort. After wintering there, Réaume and one of his colleagues led the convoy of canoes that transported out the very first shipment of furs and hides that had been collected at Detroit.

Arriving at Montreal in June of 1702, he immediately signed on for another round trip to the fort and back, bringing out the second shipment of furs. Réaume made further trading trips into the interior during the following years, and then, in 1715, when legal commerce was finally re-established at Michilimackinac (after having been closed for nearly twenty years), he returned to that area of operations.

He then worked as the official trade associate of the commandant there, in 1715-16 and 1718-19. In this high-level arrangement with Captain de Lignery, the first commandant of Ft. Michilimackinac, he first purchased merchandise from an outfitter at Montreal, in partnership with the commandant’s wife. Then he transported the cargo in to the Straits, traded it over the course of most of the following year, and hauled out the resulting furs and hides to Montreal.

There, he sold the products, paid off all of the expenses, and finally split the profits with the commandant. When Réaume finally came out from Mackinac in 1719 and retired near Montreal at the age of 51, he had spent more than twenty-five years working in the interior as a trusted voyageur-trader. His career had spanned the forts on both sides of the Straits, first Ft. de Buade on the north shore and then Ft. Michilimackinac on the south shore.

Guillaume Lalonde was Tim’s last documented ancestor who worked in the fur trade. He was hired in 1758 by the Governor of New France, during the French and Indian War, to make a round trip as a voyageur between Montreal and Ft. Michilimackinac. Guillaume’s grandfather was the voyageur-trader noted above who had worked for Cadillac at Ft. de Buade in 1696-97, while his father had made summer cargo runs as a voyageur between Montreal and Ft. Michilimackinac during the 1730s. It is a moving situation for Tim when he stands at the grave of Joseph Lalonde, his great grandfather in Black River, Michigan, since Joseph’s great grandfather was this Guillaume Lalonde, the voyageur of 1758.

In addition to having a wide array of ancestors who were involved in the fur trade, Tim’s desire to write and publish books also appears to have a genetic foundation, since he is descended from a long line of master printers and booksellers in Paris. Gutenburg pioneered the concept of the moveable-type press in Germany and began printing the Bible in about 1450.

About ninety years later, Tim’s ancestor Louis Sevestre began his 41 year career as a master printer in Paris, which spanned the years from 1543 to 1584. He was followed by his son Thomas, who was a printer and book seller at the University of Paris from 1586 to 1605. Thomas’ son Etienne likewise carried on the same tradition during his lifetime, working until about 1625. Finally, Charles Sevestre, the fourth generation of Tim’s printer and bookseller ancestors in Paris, left the Old World in 1636, and emigrated with his family to Quebec. There, he became the clerk of the fur trade company for all of New France, running the warehouse. It was at the printing shop of Louis Sevestre, on Rue Du Meurier near the St. Victor Gate, that one of the three additions of Champlain’s book Les Voyages De La Nouvelle France was published in 1632. Copies were then sold at the Louis Sevestre sales shop in the courtyard of the Palace of Justice on the Ile de la Cité in Paris. So, Tim’s genetic code seems to be rather heavily imprinted with producing books.