Date Published:
April 2005

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

Joseph Rémi Vallières de Saint Réal

Vallières de Saint-Réal, Joseph Rémi (1787-1847), judge, was born at Carleton, on the bay of Chaleur, on October 1, 1787, the son of Jean Baptiste Vallière de Saint-Réal and Marguerite Corneillier dit Grandchamp. He came with his father, who was a blacksmith, to the French royalist settlement in Markham county, Upper Canada, in 1799; but at his father's death he went to Quebec, and became a protégé of Bishop Plessis. He was called to the bar of Lower Canada in 1812; and in 1814 he was elected to the Legislative Assembly of the province for St. Maurice. He failed of re-election in 1817 ; but in 1820 he was elected for the upper town of Quebec, and he represented this constituency continuously until 1829. In 1823, ­during the absence of L. J. Papineau, he was speaker of the House. In 1829 he was appointed a judge for the district of Three Rivers; and in 1842 chief justice at Montreal. In 1838 he was suspended from the bench by Sir John Colborne, in consequence of his having granted a writ of habeas corpus to the prisoners arrested during the rebellion of 1837-8; but was restored to office by Poulett Thomson in 1840. He died on February 17, 1847. In 1812 he married Louise Pezard de Champlain, and in 1831 Esther Flora Hart, of Three Rivers. See F. J. Audet, Joseph-Rémy Vallieres de Saint-Réal (Les Annales, 1927) and P. G. Roy, Les juges de la province de Québec (Quebec, 1933).

Source  : W. Stewart Wallace, ed., The Encyclopedia of Canada, Vol. VI, Toronto, University Associates of Canada, 1948, pp. 226-227.