Date Published:
March 2009

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

ROY, Pierre-Georges,

Litt.D., LL.D.

Historian, Archivist.

Since 1920 Pierre-Georges Roy, Litt.D., LL.D., etc., has been Chief Archivist of the Province of Quebec. His authority as an historian, born of more than forty years of study and research, is widely recognized and his many published writings no less than his services as custodian of the Archives of the Province have placed historians and scholars of the Dominion greatly in his debt.

Dr. Roy was born in Lévis, Province of Quebec, on October 23, 1870, son of Léon Roy, notary public, and Marguerite (de Lavoye) Roy. He was educated in [the Séminaire de Québec and at Laval University] and is the holder of several degrees, including the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters of Laval University, Quebec (1911), and the University of Ottawa (1925), and the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws, conferred upon him in 1918 by the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. He has been a member of the Royal Society of Canada since 1911, is a member of many other learned societies and has received the following decora­tions: Officier de l'Instruction Publique de France (1906), Commandeur de Saint-Grégoire (1919), and Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur (1927). In 1926 he became Lauréat de L'Institut de France. [In 1932, he received the Tyrrell medal from the Royal Society of Canada in recognition of his contribution to the study of the history of Canada.]

Dr. Roy is the founder of the Bulletin des Recherches Historiques, which he has directed and published since 1895. During the inter­vening years he has himself published not less than 200 volumes and pamphlets on the history of Canada, among which may be men­tioned: more than forty histories of families, thirty-four volumes of Archives of reference, nine parochial monographs, six series of Les Petites Choses de Notre Histoire and many others of importance. During 1934 he also published his thirteenth "Annual Report" on the Archives of the Province, one of a series containing an inexhaustible mine of informa­tion of all kinds, which are now indispensable to historians and all others engaged in Canadian studies.

During his fourteen years of service as Archivist of the Province of Quebec, Dr. Roy has

devoted much time and thought to the rearrangement and classification of the Ar­chives, which are easily the best in the world at the present time. Through his efforts, the Provincial Museum has also come into existence in recent years and Dr. Roy now acts as its custodian. The Government of the Province could have made no better choice in entrusting to him the responsible duties of his office, which he has administered with conspicuous competence and rare fidelity.

[Pierre-Georges Roy died on November 4, 1953. He was the brother of Joseph-Edmond Roy who served as president of the Royal Society of Canada in 1897-1898 and 1905-1906 and was the author of the monumental Histoire de la seigneurie de Lauzon published in five volumes from 1897 to 1904, and the father of Antoine Roy, author of the seminal Les lettres, les sciences et les arts au Canada sous le Régime français, Essai de contribution à l'histoire de la civilisation canadienne, who succeeded him both as head of the provincial archives of Quebec and editor of the Bulletin des recherches historiques.]

Source: Jesse Edgar MIDDLETON and W. Scott DOWNS, eds.,National Encyclopedia of Canadian Biography, Vol. 1, Toronto, The Dominion Publishing Company, 1935, 383p., pp. 39-40. The parts in brackets were added by Claude Bélanger. Proper spelling has been restored.