Date Published:
April 2005

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

Hospice Anthelme Jean-Baptiste Verreau

Verreau, Hospice Anthelme Jean Baptiste (1828-1901), priest and historian, was born at L'Islet, Lower Canada, on September 6, 1828, the son of Germain Alexandre Verreau and Marie Ursule Fournier. He was educated at the Quebec Seminary, and was ordained a priest of the Roman Catholic Church in 1851. From 1851 to 1857 he was principal of the College of Ste. Thérèse, and in 1857 he became principal of the Jacques Cartier Normal School a position he occupied for the rest of his life. In 1887 he was appointed also professor of Canadian history at Laval University. In 1873 the government of Quebec commissioned him to report on materials relating to Canadian history in the archives of Europe ; and the results of his inquiry were published in the report of the minister of agriculture for 1875. Though a profound scholar, he published comparatively little. A number of his papers are printed in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, of which he was a charter member, in the Journal de l'Instruction Publique, and in the Mémoires of the Société Historique de Montréal. He edited also a collection of documents entitled Invasion du Canada: Collection des Mémoires (2 vols., Montreal , 1870-73); and he published a play, Saint Stanislas (Montreal, 1879). He died in Montreal on May 15, 1901. In 1878 he was made an LL.D. of Laval University.

Source: W. Stewart Wallace, ed., The Encyclopedia of Canada, Vol. VI, Toronto, University Associates of Canada, 1948, 398p., p. 236.