Date Published:
January 2005

L’Encyclopédie de l’histoire du Québec / The Quebec History Encyclopedia

Benjamin Sulte

Sulte, Benjamin (1841-1923), historian, was born at Three Rivers, Lower Canada, on September 17, 1841, the son of Benjamin Sulte and Marie Antoinette Lefebvre. He was educated at Three Rivers and at the Royal Military School, Quebec; and from 1860 to 1867 he was a journalist. He then entered the civil service of Canada, as an assistant translator in the House of Commons, and later he became an official in the department of militia and defence. In 1902 he retired from the civil service on pension; and he died at Ottawa on August 6, 1923. In 1871 he married Augustine, daughter of Étienne Parent, under-secretary of state for Canada.

For over sixty years he was an indefatigable student of Canadian history. His most ambitious work was his Histoire des Canadiens français (8 vols., Montreal, 1882-4) ; but he published also the following works: Histoire des Trois-Rivières (Montreal, 1870), Mélanges d'histoire et de littérature (Ottawa, 1876), Chronique trifluvienne (Montreal, 1879), La poésie française au Canada (Montreal, 1881), Album de I'histoire des Trois-Rivières (Montreal, 1881), Histoire de St. François-du-Lac (Montreal, 1886), Pages d'histoire du Canada (Montreal, 1891), Histoire de la milice canadienne française (Montreal, 1897), La langue française au Canada (Lévis, 1898), and La bataille de Châteauguay (Quebec, 1899). To newspapers and other periodicals he contributed innumerable articles on historical matters; and the more important of these have been collected and edited by Gérard Malchelosse under the title Mélanges historiques (21 vols., Montreal, 1918-34). He published also two volumes of verse, Les Laurentiennes (Montreal, 1870) and Les chants nouveaux ( Ottawa , 1876) ; and he was the author of a French translation of "God Save the King." In 1882 he was appointed a charter member of the Royal Society of Canada, and in 1904 he was elected its president. See G. Malchelosse, Cinquante-six ans de vie littéraire (Montreal, 1916) ; and F. J. Audet, Benjamin Sulte (Bull. rech, hist., 1926).

Source : W. Stewart WALLACE, "Benjamin Sulte", in The Encyclopedia of Canada,   Vol. VI, Toronto, University Associates of Canada, 1948, 398p. p. 85.