Jean-Louis Légaré was a French-Canadian trader and one of the founding members of Willow Bunch, Saskatchewan. He was born in Saint-Jacques, Quebec October 25, 1841 and left in 1866 to find work first in the eastern United States, then in Minnesota. After working as a clerk and freighter around Pembina, North Dakota he opened a trading post in 1871 at Wood Mountain, Saskatchewan then a Métis hivernant settlement. He married Marie Ouellette in 1873 who bore him a son Albert Joseph. His wife died in 1876 and he never remarried.