Paul-Émile Roy

Career Highlights

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 Saint-Laurent, Quebec. 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, L'évolution religieuse du Québec d'après le roman de 1940 à 1965, was published in 1981). He spent most of the rest of his career teaching French at the Cégep de Saint-Laurent.

Paul-Émile Roy’s thinking was close to that of the great writer Pierre Vadeboncœur, with whom he maintained a copious correspondence for 15 years. Roy’s work was profoundly engaged in contemporary issues, but avoided “hostile” methods and systems of interpreting literary texts. He was a humanist in the great tradition of the Renaissance. He was a poet, a philosopher (though he claimed not to be), an essayist, a biographer, and a diarist —  he filled over 100 notebooks with thoughts about contemporary Quebec. He was also a tireless 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.

Roy spent 40 years attempting to understand Quebec’s evolution through its history and literature, and vice versa. This approach marginalized him in the world of humanities, but made his voice all the more valuable and indispensable.

Selected Writings

• Claudel, poète mystique de la Bible (1958)
• L'engagement chrétien (1961)
• Les intellectuels dans la cité (1963)
• Libres dans la foi (1968)
• Études littéraires: Germaine Guévremont, Réjean Ducharme, Gabrielle Roy (1989)
• Une révolution avortée: l'enseignement au Québec depuis 1960 (1991)
• Réforme ou maquillage? (1994)
• Pierre Vadeboncœur, un homme attentif (1995)
• La magie de la lecture (1996)
• Propos sur la culture (1997)
• Rêveries dans les Laurentides (1998)
• Lectures québécoises et Indépendance (1999)