Sir George-Étienne Cartier (1814-1873) was a Canadian statesman who led French Canada into the federation of British North America in 1867.

George-Étienne Cartier was born in Saint-Antoine, Lower Canada, on Sept. 6, 1814. He studied at St-Sulpice College, Montreal, in preparation for a legal career. Called to the bar in 1835, he was immediately caught up in the political struggle of the French-Canadian patriotes against the English-dominated executive of Lower Canada. As an ardent supporter of the reform cause led by Louis-Joseph Papineau, Cartier fought in two of the sharpest encounters of the short-lived rebellion of 1837: the battles at Saint-Denis and Saint-Charles. The wholesale defeat of the rebels forced him to flee to the United States, where he settled for a time in Burlington, Vt. After an amnesty declared by the British government, Cartier returned to Montreal in 1838 and, as passions cooled after the rebellions, settled down to...