The surface of Lake Hocquart is usually frozen from the beginning of December to the end of March, but safe circulation on the ice is generally made from mid-December to mid-March.

After having been controller of the port of Rochefort, he came in 1729 to settle in Quebec (city), as authorizing commissioner and interim intendant of New France, in order to replace Claude -Thomas Dupuy; he was confirmed in his functions in 1731.

In about twenty years, Gilles Hocquart advanced settlement and agriculture, notably by granting seigneuries in the region of lac Champlain and in Nouvelle-Beauce.

One of his main achievements was the construction of a depot at the Intendant's palace in Quebec (city), where all of the colony's timed registers and documents are stored.

Several historians of French Canada emphasize that his stubbornness in front of the king would have made it possible to preserve a substantial part of the archives written in the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries.