This family originated in what is now the department of Sarthe, near Le Mans. They lived in Mamers, in the parish of Nôtre-Dame de Vair. Simon Fortin (1575-1617) was the father of the first Julien (1599-1679), who married Marie Lavye or Lavie (1601-1628) in Vair in November 1619. Her father Gervais owned a regionally famous tavern called "l'Auberge du Cheval Blanc," but nothing more is known about the Lavyes. We know of two Fortin children: Hélène, who apparently never left France, and Julien (1621-1690), the immigrant, who departed from Dieppe in 1650 and in December of that year bought a farm at Petit-Cap in Québec. In October 1652 he married Geneviève Gamache dit Lamarre, baptized October 3, 1636 at Saint-Illiers-la-Ville, a town in the diocese of Chartres (France), daughter of Nicolas Gamache dit Lamarre and Jacqueline Cadot; she was the sister of the pioneer settler Nicolas Gamache, Seigneur de l’Islet.

Julien and Geneviève were the parents of twelve children, most of whom survived to adulthood and had many children of their own, so that the Fortin 'blood' is very widespread in modern-day Québec. The family has been studied more than most, perhaps because the entertainers Madonna and Céline Dion are descendants, as is the French-Canadian singer and songwriter Lynda Lemay.

We are descended from the eldest son Charles Fortin (born 1656), married in 1681 to Sainte Cloutier, a granddaughter of one of Québec's first settlers, Abraham Martin; and also from a younger son Pierre Fortin (born 1669), married in 1697 to Gertrude Hudon.

Descent from Charles: his daughter Geneviève (born 1686) married Louis Lemieux in 1705, and was the mother of Marie Lemieux, who married Louis Caron in 1727; they were the parents of Pierre-Laurent Caron who in 1764 married Elisabeth Chouinard (descended from Pierre Fortin).

Descent from Pierre: he and his wife Gertrude had a daughter, Reine, who in 1741 married Julien Chouinard; their daughter was the Elisabeth who married Pierre-Laurent Caron, her second cousin, once removed.

Elisabeth and Pierre-Laurent Caron were the great-great-grandparents of Marie Eva Jean Martin, our great-grandmother.

click here for a thorough website (in French) about Julien Fortin, including charts of the descent of Céline Dion and Madonna.