Novelist, journalist, writer of short stories, literary critic, and pamphleteer, Claude-Henri Grignon was one of Canada's most prolific script-writers for radio and television. An energetic and versatile individual, he ventured beyond the literary and cultural spheres, serving a ten-year term as mayor of his native village of Sainte-Adèle. Nonetheless, his main interests lay in writing and publishing. Always blunt in his writing, Grignon made no apologies for his strong likes and dislikes. Once, when he was asked to describe himself in the course of an interview, he confided: "I am thin-skinned and passionate, a peasant, self-taught, a man of the earth earthy, a dreamer, a romantic, an indomitable individualist, a poet, a devout Catholic.... I have chosen to become a writer in order to be free and to assert myself."

Born in the small community of Sainte-Adèle, in the Laurentian mountain region north of...