New Lecture Presented by Réal Bélanger, Directeur général adjoint

 

Quelques réflexions sur Henri Bourassa et la participation canadienne à la Grande Guerre, 1914–1918

 

On 7 October 2014, at Centre Block on Parliament Hill, Ottawa, Réal Bélanger, directeur général adjoint of the Dictionnaire biographique du Canada/Dictionary of Canadian Biography (DBC/DCB), presented a paper titled Quelques réflexions sur Henri Bourassa et la participation canadienne à la Grande Guerre, 1914–1918 (Some reflections on Henri Bourassa and Canadian participation in the Great War, 1914–1918). Organized in partnership with the Laurier Centre for Military, Strategic and Disarmament Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University, the talk, which was very well received by the parliamentary officials present, led to lively exchanges on the subject.

        Réal Bélanger holds a doctorate in Canadian and Quebec political history. A retired professor from the history department at the Université Laval, he has been the directeur général adjoint of the Dictionnaire biographique du Canada/Dictionary of Canadian Biography since 1998. A specialist in biography, ideologies, and political parties, he has written several scholarly books and articles. For his work Wilfrid Laurier. Quand la politique devient passion, he won the Maxime Raymond prize in 1990. In 2012, as co-director of the DBC/DCB, he received, along with his colleague John English, the prestigious Governor General’s History Award for Popular Media: the Pierre Berton Prize. He is also the author of the biography Henri Bourassa: le fascinant destin d’un homme libre (1868–1914) (Québec, 2013), which in 2014 was awarded the prize of la Présidence de l’Assemblée Nationale du Québec (best book on Quebec politics in 2014). To date he has participated in conferences at the universities of the Sorbonne (Paris), Oxford, Edinburgh, and London, among others.