Blanche Lamontagne Beauregard

Blanche Lamontagne-Beauregard (January 13, 1889 – May 25, 1958) was a Canadian poet, and the first published female poet of the Québec region of Canada. She is also the first woman to have faced literary criticism without using a pseudonym.

She was born in Les Escoumins, Québec, and attended various convent schools before taking classes around 1910 at the École d'enseignement secondaire pour les jeunes filles (which became the Collège Marguerite-Bourgeoys in 1926 and borrowed much of its curriculum from Université Laval). She may have studied literature at the University of Montreal. Her first poetry collection, Visions gaspésiennes (1913), received the Prix de la Société du parler français au Canada. After her marriage with lawyer Hector Beauregard in July 1920, she was able to devote herself to writing. She belongs to Québec's regionalist school of writing and drew largely upon the folklore of the Gaspé peninsula.