Philippe Aubert de Gaspé

Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé (French pronunciation: [filip ʒozɛf obɛʁ də ɡaspe]; 30 October 1786 – 29 January 1871) was a Canadian lawyer, writer, and seigneur. He is known chiefly for his novel Les Anciens Canadiens (translated as The Canadians of Old, 1864), considered the first classic of French Canadian fiction.

Biography

He was born in Quebec City in 1786, the son of seigneur Pierre-Ignace Aubert de Gaspé and Catherine Tarieu de Lanaudière, the daughter of seigneur Charles-François Tarieu de La Naudière. The Aubert de Gaspé family was distinguished, ennobled by Louis XIV in 1693. Philippe-Joseph's grandfather, Ignace-Philippe Aubert de Gaspé, fought under Louis-Joseph de Montcalm at Carillon (Ticonderoga). Later Joseph inherited the family estate on the St. Lawrence River.

Philippe-Joseph studied at the Séminaire de Québec and served in the local militia, becoming captain. He studied law with Jonathan Sewell and then with Jean-Baptiste-Olivier Perrault and was called to the bar in 1811. After practising law until 1816, he was appointed sheriff for the Quebec district. He became mired in debt, for which he was imprisoned four years. When released, he retired to his ancestral home at Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, Quebec on the St. Lawrence, where he spent thirty years in study.

At the age of seventy-five, he completed the novel Les Anciens Canadiens (Quebec, 1863), translated in English as The Canadians of Old (1864). Almost entirely based on fact, the story illustrates Canadian national tradition, character, and manners. The author interwove events of his own chequered life with the tragic tale of the struggles and the fall of New France and the change of regime, the eyewitnesses of which he had known personally. It was perhaps the most popular book published in Quebec up to that time.