Louis Hémon

Louis Hémon was born July 12th 1880 in Brest France. He was only two years old when his parents moved to Paris. He will later study at the Sorbonne. Now on his own, he moves to London, England. Louis Hémon spent eight years of his life in London. While in England, he worked as a translator for a ship broker firm of London. He started boxing and rowing as a sport, this is also where he will find love. Louis Hémon met Lydia O'Kelly; a baby girl named Lydia Kathleen will be born on April 12 1909.

He will start a series of short stories, eight in all, but only two will be published before his demise. La peur was published on October 15th 1904 in Le Vélo and Lizzie Blakeston published in Le Temps on March 3 and 8 1908. In the short stories we can already see his interest for the underprivileged in society. He will then start his first of three novels written from 1907 to 1911.

Those novels will be sent to an editor but sadly won't be received with an immediate success. He will immigrate to Canada on July 12th 1911 and work for an insurance company in Montréal. Later he will travel to Péribonka where he will work as a labour on a farm and will write his novel Maria Chapdelaine. His taste for adventure makes him pursue new horizons; Louis Hémon leaves Péribonka and travels out West. Before leaving, he sends his manuscript to a newspaper in Paris, France.

The man will never reach his destination. July 8, 1913, two men leave the Town of Chapleau to render in Western Canada. Half an hour later, the 1226 locomotive heading also west out of town. The two men were walking on the railway without suspecting that their last hour approach. It was this way that the French literary community lost a great man of letters. Louis Hémon, in the prime of his life, died tragically, never knowing all the success his novel Maria Chapdelaine would get over the years. It is in Chapleau that he rests.

A museum was opened in 1938, situated in Péribonka, Québec. In 1986 Centre culturel de Chapleau was inaugurated as Le Centre culturel Louis-Hemon.

Here is a list of books published other than Maria Chapdelaine. Collin Maillard was written before 1908, but published only in 1924. His second novel, Battling Malone, pugilist written in 1905, will be published in 1925. His last novel written in England was called M. Ripois et la Némésis was published in 1950.