Paul-Émile Roy

Paul-Émile Roy, author (born in 1928 in Saint-Cyprien, Québec). Paul-Émile Roy grew up in Edmundston, New Brunswick. He studied classics and theology and prepared for the priesthood at a Roman Catholic seminary in Ville Saint-Laurent, Québec. After deciding not to become a priest after all, he taught Latin at a college in the same city from 1955 to 1956. He went on to earn a master’s degree at the Institut catholique de Paris and a doctorate at the Université de Montréal (his thesis was published in 1981 under the title L'évolution religieuse du Québec d'après le roman de 1940 à 1965). He spent most of the rest of his career teaching French at the Cégep de Saint-Laurent.

Roy’s thinking was close to that of the great writer Pierre Vadeboncœur (1920- ), with whom he maintained a copious correspondence for 15 years. Roy’s work was profoundly engaged in contemporary issues, but avoided terrorist methods and systems of interpreting literary texts. He was a humanist in the great tradition of the Renaissance. He was also a poet (Rêveries dans les Laurentides, 1998), a philosopher—though he claimed not to be (Les intellectuels dans la cité, 1963; Une révolution avortée: l'enseignement au Québec depuis 1960, 1991; Réforme ou maquillage ?, 1994), an essayist (Claudel, poète mystique de la Bible, 1958; L'engagement chrétien, 1961; Libres dans la foi, 1968; Études littéraires: Germaine Guévremont, Réjean Ducharme, Gabrielle Roy, 1989; La magie de la lecture, 1996; Propos sur la culture, 1997; Lectures québécoises et Indépendance, 1999), a biographer (Pierre Vadeboncœur, un homme attentif, 1995), and a diarist (he filled over 100 notebooks with thoughts about contemporary Québec, which it is hoped will be published one day). He was also an indefatigable letter writer and columnist in journals and newspapers such as L'Action universitaire, L'Action nationale, L'Action indépendantiste, Lectures, Le Devoir, and La Revue de l'Université d'Ottawa. Paul-Émile Roy spent 40 years attempting to understand Québec’s evolution through its history and literature, and vice versa. This approach marginalized him in the world of letters, but made his voice all the more valuable and indispensable.