Honoré Beaugrand

Honoré Beaugrand (1887)

Honoré Beaugrand (born March 24, 1848 in Saint-Joseph-de-Lanoraie , Québec ; † October 7, 1906 in Montreal ; baptized name: Marie-Louis-Honoré Beaugrand ) was a Canadian politician , publicist , journalist and writer . He founded the daily La Patrie in 1879 and was mayor of Montreal from 1885 to 1887.

biography

After graduating from the Montreal Military Academy, Beaugrand joined the French Army under General François-Achille Bazaine in 1865 and participated in the intervention in Mexico . After the end of the war and the shooting of Emperor Maximilian I , he first moved to France and in 1868 to the United States . He then worked as a journalist for various newspapers in St. Louis , Boston and Fall River . During his time in New England he was active as a writer. His most important work was the novel Jeanne la fileuse that deals with the emigration of impoverished French-Canadian deals in the United States.

In 1873 Beaugrand married Eliza Walker in Falls River, in the same year he joined the Freemasons . In 1878 he returned to Canada and published the newspaper Le Fédéral in Ottawa , which only existed for a few months. In the same year Beaugrand settled in Montreal, where he first published the satirical weekly Le Farceur . Finally, in February 1879, he founded the liberal daily La Patrie , with which he had great success and became wealthy. Beaugrand often came into conflict with the conservatives and the Catholic clergy. With his radicalism, however, he also angered influential liberals such as Honoré Mercier and Wilfrid Laurier .

Beaugrand was elected Mayor of Montreal in 1885 and subsequently advocated compulsory vaccinations to curb cholera . In 1887 he resigned from this office and in the following years went on several trips for longer periods: 1888/89 in the Mediterranean, 1889/90 in the southwestern United States and 1892/93 in the Far East. He described his experiences in his newspaper in the form of letters, which were also published as collective works. There were also numerous short stories. In Québec , Beaugrand is best known for writing down French-Canadian folk legends. This includes Chasse-galerie , which is about rangers (voyageurs) who make a pact with the devil. In 1897 he sold his newspaper and founded the radical Masonic lodge L'Émancipation . He maintained close relationships with anti-clerical groups.

A street in Montreal and the subway station Honoré-Beaugrand are named after Beaugrand .

Works

• La Chasse-galerie et autres récits
• Anita: souvenirs d'un contre-guérillas
• Jeanne la fileuse: episode de l'emigration franco-canadienne aux États-Unis
• Contes canadiens
• Les feux-follets
• Lettres de voyage: France, Italie, Sicile, Malte, Tunisie, Algérie, Espagne
• De Montréal à Victoria par le transcontinental canadien
• Six mois dans les Montagnes-Rocheuses: Colorado, Utah, Nouveau-Mexique
• Macloune
• Le fantôme de l'avare

Web links

Wikisource: Honoré Beaugrand  - Sources and full texts (French)

• Biography on the website of the city administration (French)
• Honoré Beaugrand . In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography . 24 volumes, 1966–2018. University of Toronto Press, Toronto ( English , French ).