The Quebec writer and historian Benjamin Sulte amazed his contemporaries by his inexhaustible energy and his voluminous production. To avoid wasting time, while walking down the street he would compose poems that he referred to as "vers à pattes" (verse on foot). Never bothering with a rough draft, Sulte found it most efficient to write approximately thirty articles at the same time, rather than going through all his notes to write just one. In 1886 the Revue Canadienne honored him with a special centenary banquet celebrating their publication between 1864 and 1886 of one hundred of his articles. By the end of his life Sulte had published more than thirty-five hundred articles as well as a long list of books.

Born in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, on 17 September 1841 to Benjamin and Marie-Antoinette Lefebvre Sulte, he developed a strong work ethic at an early age through necessity. His father, a navigator, died...