Date Published:
February 2005

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

Jean-Baptiste Eric Dorion

"L'Enfant terrible"

Dorion, Jean Baptiste Eric (1826-1866), journalist and politician, was born at Ste. Anne de la Pérade, Champlain county, Lower Canada, on September 16, 1826, the son of Pierre Antoine Dorion and Geneviève Bureau. He was educated at his birthplace, and became a journalist. In 1848 he was one of the founders of L'Avenir (1848-52), the mouthpiece of the parti rouge; and later he founded at L'Avenir, Lower Canada , Le Défricheur, a local newspaper to which Wilfrid Laurier succeeded as editor. He sat in the Legislative Assembly of Canada for Drummond and Arthabaska from 1854 to 1857 and from 1861 to his death on November 1, 1866. An advanced radical, he was known to his contemporaries by the nickname of "l'enfant terrible." For several years he was president of the Institut Canadian in Montreal. See J. C. St.-Amant, "L'enfant terrible" (Bull. rech. hist., 1898).

Source: W. Stewart WALLACE, ed., The Encyclopedia of Canada, Vol. II, Toronto, University Associates of Canada, 1948, 411p., p. 227.