Louis-Honoré Fréchette
Template:Short description Template:Use Canadian English Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox writer
Louis-Honoré Fréchette Template:Post-nominals (Template:IPA; November 16, 1839 – May 31, 1908) was a Canadian poet, politician, playwright and short story writer. For his prose, he would be the first Quebecois to receive the Prix Montyon from the Académie française, and the first Canadian to receive any honor from a European nation.<ref name=DCB>Template:Cite DCB</ref>
Early life and education
Fréchette was born on November 16, 1839, in Lévis, Lower Canada. From 1854 to 1860, Fréchette did his classical studies at the Séminaire de Québec, the Collège de Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière and at the Séminaire de Nicolet. Fréchette first showed his rebelliousness when he studied at college.<ref name=DCB/> He later studied law at Université Laval.
Career
In 1864, he opened a lawyer's office in Lévis and founded two newspapers: Le drapeau de Lévis and La Tribune de Levis. He exiled himself to Chicago, where he wrote La voix d'un exilé. A number of plays which he wrote during that period were lost in the Great Chicago Fire.
Fréchette returned to Quebec in 1871, where he was a Liberal candidate for Lévis in the provincial elections that year; he was not elected.<ref name="BrownCook1966">Template:Cite book</ref> However, in 1874, he was elected a Member of Parliament in Ottawa. He served in the House of Commons of Canada from 1874 to 1878 as a Liberal Party of Canada member from Lévis. He was not re-elected in 1878. After that, he moved to Montreal, where he began writing full-time, having inherited his aunt's wealth when she died.
He was the first Quebecer to receive the Montyon Prize of the Académie française for his collection of poems Les Fleurs boréales, les oiseaux de neige (1879).
In 1881, Queen's College, Kingston, honored him with LLD.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> In that same year, Fréchette would meet Mark Twain in Montreal, whose writing he had much admired; indeed, the two would remain friends, exchanging works and favorite books.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> In the following year, Twain would toast Fréchette at an American welcoming banquet in Holyoke, joking about his regard for the translation of works that, in his fictitious "translation his [Fréchette's] pathetic poems have naturally become humorous, his humorous poems have become sad. Anybody who knows even the rudiments of arithmetic will know that Monsieur Fréchette's poems are now worth exactly twice as much as they were before."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> In 1897, Fréchette was made a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George. After he died in 1908, he was entombed at the Notre Dame des Neiges Cemetery in Montreal.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Canada Post issued a postage stamp in his honour on July 7, 1989.
In 1991, Louis Honoré Fréchette Public School, a French immersion school, opened in Thornhill, Ontario.
Electoral record
Template:1872 Canadian federal election/Lévis Template:1874 Canadian federal election/Lévis Template:1878 Canadian federal election/Lévis
Notable works
Poetry
- La voix d'un exilé (1866)
- La découverte du Mississippi (1873)
- Pêle-mêle (1877)
- La Légende d'un peuple (1877)
- Poésies choisies (1879)
- Les Fleurs boréales, les oiseaux de neige (1879)
- Quebec (1887)<ref>“Louis Fréchette Poems.” Louis Fréchette Poems > My Poetic Side, mypoeticside.com/poets/louis-frechette-poems.</ref>
Short stories
- L'Iroquoise du lac Saint-Pierre (1861)
- Originaux et détraqués (1892), based on real life characters
- Les contes de Jos Violon
- Christmas in French Canada (1899)
Plays
- Le retour de l'exilé (1880)
- Papineau (1880)
- La retour de l'exilé (1880)
- Félix Poutré (1892)
Archives
There is a Louis-Honoré Fréchette fonds at Library and Archives Canada.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Archival reference number is R8032. There is also a Louis-Honoré Fréchette fonds at Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
References
Bibliography
- W. H. New, ed. Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002: 395–97.
External links
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- Notice biographique de Louis Fréchette at L'Île (in French)
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- 1839 births
- 1908 deaths
- 19th-century Canadian poets
- Canadian male poets
- Canadian Companions of the Order of St Michael and St George
- 19th-century Canadian dramatists and playwrights
- Poets from Quebec
- French-language Canadian poets
- Liberal Party of Canada MPs
- Members of the House of Commons of Canada from Quebec
- Persons of National Historic Significance (Canada)
- French-language Canadian dramatists and playwrights
- Canadian male dramatists and playwrights
- 19th-century Canadian male writers
- Université Laval alumni
- Burials at Notre Dame des Neiges Cemetery
- 19th-century members of the House of Commons of Canada