Date Published:
March 2005

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

Joseph Octave Crémazie

Crémazie, Joseph Octave (1822-1897), poet, was born at Quebec, Lower Canada, on January 16, 1827, the son of Jacques Crémazie. He was educated at the Quebec Seminary, and about 1848 he set himself. up in business in Quebec as a book-seller. He began to contribute verses to the Journal de Québec, and it was for the readers of this journal that his verses were first issued in separate form. In 1862 business reverses compelled his departure from Quebec, and he took refuge in France. Here he spent the remainder of his days, under a false name, in the employ of a mercantile firm. During these years he wrote nothing but a Journal de siège de Paris, in which he described day by day the siege of 1870. He died at Havre, France, on January 16, 1879. After his death his friends published his Oeuvres complètes (Montreal, 1883). "Crémazie may justly be called the father of French-Canadian poetry" (Abbé C. Roy). See Abbé H. R. Casgrain, Octave Crémazie (Montreal, 1912), and Biographies canadiennes (Montreal, 1885), and T. Chapais, Octave Crémazie (Nouvelles soirées canadiennes, vol. ii, 1883).

Source  : W. Stewart WALLACE, ed., The Encyclopedia of Canada, Vol. II, Toronto, University Associates of Canada, 1948, 411p., p. 148.