Novelist, poet, playwright, folklorist, and memorialist, Félix-Antoine Savard was for a long time the dean of Quebec literature. Born in Quebec City, the son of Louis-Joseph and Ida-Geneviève Gosselin, he was educated by the Marist Brothers and at the Grand Séminaire in Chicoutimi. He was ordained on 4 June 1922 and taught Latin and French at his alma mater from 1919 to 1926. After a brief stay in a Benedictine monastery, he devoted fifteen years almost exclusively to the establishment and administration of rural parishes (Bagotville, Charlevoix, La Malbaie, and in the Abitibi region).

His profound knowledge of the land and the people of Quebec gained during these years determined his literary preoccupations, just as his familiarity with the literature of antiquity and of France shaped his style. In his masterwork, Menaud, maître-draveur (1937; translated as Boss of the River, 1947), usually associated with the roman...