Joseph "Jos" Montferrand (French: [ʒozɛf mɔ̃fɛʁɑ̃]; born Joseph Favre [favʁ]; October 25, 1802 – October 4, 1864) was a French-Canadian logger, strongman, and folk hero of the working man[1] and was the inspiration for the legendary Ottawa Valley figure Big Joe Mufferaw.

In 1827, he began work as a logger on the Rivière du Nord in Lower Canada and then moved to the upper Ottawa River.

The loggers felled trees over the winter, drove the logs down the river, and eventually arrived at Quebec City.

Montferrand would also briefly have a stint in the United States, working for the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company in Manchester, New Hampshire.

There was ongoing animosity between Anglophones and Francophones and frequent fights between English-, Irish-, and French-Canadian loggers.

Montferrand defended French-Canadian workers against gangs of Irish immigrants known as "Shiners" in the Bytown area.

Mufferaw is sometimes enlisted as a defender of oppressed French-Canadian loggers[1] in the days that their bosses were English-Canadians and their rivals at work were Irish-Canadian criminals.

In one story, Big Joe was in a Montreal bar, and a British army major named Jones was freely insulting French-Canadians.