Émile Ollivier

Education

Émile Ollivier studied at the Lycée in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, then at the École normale supérieure, where he earned a degree in philosophy (1962). He later received a degree in literature from La Sorbonne in Paris, France.

Career in Canada

Ollivier immigrated to Canada in 1966, and taught at the Collège and École normale d'Amos (in Amos, Quebec) for eight years. Then, he successively became co-ordinator at the Ministry of Education (1973–76), assistant director of Télé Université (1976–77), and eventually an administrator at the Université du Québec à Montréal (1977–80). That same year, he was named professor of andragogy at the Université de Montréal’s Department of Education, where he held a position for more than twenty-five years.

Alongside his teaching career, Ollivier was very active within the Haitian community in Montreal, serving as a community organizer for various groups and acting as a consultant for the Office de la langue française and for special projects at Télé-Université (part of the Ministry of Education). He also remained very active among Haitian intellectuals in exile in Montreal, contributing to the journals Nouvelle Optique and Collectif Paroles.

A PhD in sociology, university authority and essayist, Ollivier is, above all, considered one of the greatest contemporary Antillean novelists. He portrays characters in a sort of exile from themselves, in perpetual search for family, the past, their roots, a better life, or simply for truth. With wild language and a fiery tone, he denounces the “massacre society” (société à massacres) that his native country has become. This stance in no way prevents him from paying tribute to the beauty of Haiti or to the enduring values of its people.

Recipient of numerous literary prizes, Chevalier of the National Order of Quebec (Ordre national du Québec) (1993) and of the Ordre des Arts et des lettres (2000), France, Émile Ollivier died in 2002.

Publications

Novels & Fiction

• La discorde aux cent voies (1986)
• Passages (1991)
• Les urnes scellées (1995)
• Mère Solitude (1999)
• Mille-Eaux (1999)
• Le serpent à plumes (2001)
• La Brûlerie (2004)

Non-fiction

• L'Alphabétisation fonctionnelle: les formations sociales dépendantes (1973)
• Haïti: quel développement? (Propos sur l'Enquête... de Jean-Jacques Honorat) (1975)
• 1946-1976: Trente ans de pouvoir noir (1976)
• Analyse sociologique d'un programme d'éducation populaire: l'expérience multimédia, (1980)
• Sociologie de la formation des adultes: matériaux pour un enseignement (1981)
• La marginalité silencieuse (1991)