At the turn of the century Guy Delahaye could have been the Guillaume Apollinaire of Quebec. But in a country where a traditional Catholic church and a conservative state controlled all cultural activity to the point of censorship, modernism was not welcome and the avant-garde would repeatedly fail. Meanwhile, in France, Apollinaire was able to reconcile Catholicism and progress. Delahaye was also a central figure in another debate that dominated the French-Canadian literary scene at the beginning of the century, the controversy that pitted the regionalist forces against the exotistes (exotics), including Delahaye, who had a wider, international perspective on art and life.

François-Guillaume Lahaise (later to adopt the pen name Guy Delahaye) was born at Saint-Hilaire-sur-Richelieu on 18 March 1888 to Evangéline Cheval and Pierre-Adélard Lahaise, owners of the town's general store. After only four years at L'Ecole Modèle, the local...