Arthur de Bussières was born on 20 January 1877 in Montreal, the same city where he died on 7 May 1913 at the age of thirty-six. His father, Fabien, and his mother, Rachel de Beriau Bussières, who were married in Montreal on 4 June 1873, had thirteen children altogether. Second in the family, Arthur could not (to his life-long regret) pursue extended higher studies at a middle-class city college. Indeed, when de Bussières's primary education at Saint-Jean-Baptiste School on Rue Sanguinet (then run by the Clercs de Saint-Viateur) was finished, he was called to help his father with his work. Fabien de Bussières, like one of the characters drawn by the great French novelist and physician Georges Duhamel, was stricken every year by the urge to move his large family. He also moved from job to job, from cart driver to housepainter to store-window decorator. At...