Occupation Historian Name Marcel Trudel | Role Author | |
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Died January 11, 2011, Longueuil, Canada Books Canada's Forgotten Slaves: Two Centuries of Bondage | ||
Mentor Marcel Trudel
Marcel Trudel, (May 29, 1917 – January 11, 2011) was a Canadian historian, university professor (1947–1982) and author who published more than 40 books on the history of New France, scientifically re-written. Trudel's work has been honored with major awards.
Contents
- Mentor Marcel Trudel
- Histoire sec3 1609 1759 Lesclavage en Nouvelle France
- Early life and education
- Career
- Selected works in English
- Selected Honours
- References
Histoire sec.3 - (1609-1759) L'esclavage en Nouvelle-France
Early life and education
Marcel Trudel was born in Saint-Narcisse-de-Champlain, Quebec, northeast of Trois-Rivières, the son of Hermyle Trudel and Antoinette Cossette. He earned a B.A. in 1941 and a Doctorate in 1945 from Université Laval.
Career
In 1945, Trudel began postdoctoral studies for two years at Harvard University, and then returned to Université Laval to teach in its newly founded Institute of History. He went on to become head of the History department. From 1955 to 1960, he published on many subjects that the Catholic hierarchy controlling the university found scandalous, such as: "Chiniquy" (the first French Catholic priest who became a Presbyterian minister), "The Canadian Catholic Church under the English Military Government, in 1759-1764", and "The Slaves in New France" (most of them being Amerindian and belonging even to the Catholic Church masters). As of 1962, Trudel was also president of the For Laïcité Movement in Quebec City. It was too much: in 1962, under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church, Laval University demoted him from his position as head of the History department.
In 1961, Laval University Press joined with the University of Toronto Press in establishing the Dictionary of Canadian Biography (DCB). Trudel served as the Associate General Editor from 1961 to 1965, working with the General Editor, George Williams Brown, a historian at the University of Toronto. They collaborated both in organizing the over-all project, which has published 15 volumes and is on-going, and in editing the first volume, which covered the period from 1000-1700 and was published in 1966. The DCB is published simultaneously in English and French and has been widely recognized as one of the most important scholarly undertakings in Canada.
In 1965, Trudel left Laval University and Quebec City to live near Ottawa and taught at Carleton University. The next year, he began teaching at the University of Ottawa after the Ontario government took over the university from the Catholic Oblate Fathers. Having reached age 65 in 1982, he was relieved of his lecturing duties, but he continued to write from his home near Montreal until the year he died; half of his books were published in retirement. In 1993, he also began lecturing at a university to seniors' groups.
Trudel's life's work was the history of New France, in particular his monumental and authoritative Histoire de la Nouvelle-France. Trudel meticulously reviewed the primary sources and criticized previous accounts in his effort to tell the colony's story without what he viewed as pious or nationalist bias.
Marcel Trudel died at the age of 93 on January 11, 2011, of generalized cancer. He left his 3 children, plus six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.