Jean-Charles Harvey
Jean-Charles Harvey was a notable Canadian writer and journalist born on November 10, 1891, in La Malbaie, Quebec. After a childhood marked by family loss and early education at the Chicoutimi Minor Seminary, he initially pursued a religious path with the Jesuits but left the order in 1915 to embark on a career in journalism. Harvey worked for various publications, including La Patrie and La Presse, and experienced personal loss with the death of his first wife, Marie-Anne Dufour, with whom he had three daughters.
He found literary success with his debut novel "Marcel Faure," published in 1922, which addressed themes of economic independence in Quebec. Harvey's controversial works often challenged church authority and tradition, particularly his book "Les Demi-Civilisés," which was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church shortly after its release in 1934. Throughout his career, he edited multiple publications, founded his own newspaper, Le Jour, and served as a news commentator for Radio Canada. Harvey's writings, reflecting an antiseparatist viewpoint, contributed significantly to discussions on Quebec identity, economics, and liberation, resonating with diverse audiences both within Canada and abroad. He passed away in 1967, before fully witnessing the posthumous acclaim for his work.
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Jean-Charles Harvey
Journalist
- Born: November 10, 1891
- Birthplace: La Malbaie, Quebec, Canada
- Died: January 3, 1967
Biography
Jean-Charles Harvey was born on November 10, 1891, in La Malbaie, Quebec, Canada, to carpenter John and mother Mina (Trudell) Harvey. When he was three, his family took an extended two-year trip to the United States. They arrived in Massachusetts in 1894 and stayed until 1896. His father died a year later, when he was only six, possibly prompting his enrollment in the Chicoutimi Minor Seminary—where he studied from 1905 to 1908—and his later studies for the priesthood, starting in 1908, when his family moved to Montreal.
Harvey would study the classical humanities with the Jesuits for six years, earn his bachelor’s degree, and make his vows as a Jesuit in 1910, when he was nineteen. However, disillusioned, Harvey would leave the Society of Jesus in 1915, to study at the Université Laval in Quebec City, and to begin a new phase of life and a new career. Working as a reporter for La Patrie, the twenty-four year-old went on the next year to La Presse, and also in that year married Marie-Anne Dufour, with whom he had three daughters before Marie-Anne died in 1921.
In 1922, having moved to working as an information officer for Machine Agricole Nationale in Montmagny, Quebec, Harvey would take an editor’s job at Le Soleil, in Montreal, and marry Germaine Miville-Deschênes, with whom he had four more children, all sons.
When Machine Agricole Nationale went bankrupt, Harvey found the subsequent inspiration for his first novel, which was published in 1922. The work, Marcel Faure, expressed the theme of economic independence for the province of Quebec. Its appearance stirred controversy, which Harvey enjoyed. Another book, Les Demi-Civilisés, would create even more of a sensation, with its thematic call for liberation from church and tradition. The work was published and on the shelves by April 6, 1934, and within twenty days had been indexed for the forbidden books list by Cardinal Jean-Marie-Rodrigue Villeneuve, in conjunction and commiseration with the Roman Catholic church, who had officially condemned the book days earlier. Though Harvey had made it to the position of Le Soleil’s editor in chief, which he took in 1927, the publication fired him, and his next two works, volumes of short stories, received lukewarm attention.
With the first short-story collection, published in 1929, Harvey won the Prix David. Remaining adamant about his position, he founded his own paper—Le Jour—in 1937, which he edited until 1946. He found work with Radio Canada, where he was news commentator from 1946 to 1953. Harvey would continue writing from an antiseparatist point of view. This viewpoint inevitably found its way into his next nine books and articles; he took this belief with him to his death in 1967. His death came years too early to enjoy the appreciation of his work. Harvey’s books grew in popularity among Francophiles and Anglophiles, Canadian and non-Canadian alike, because of his rigorously honest appraisal of themes important to the Quebec people for over three decades: separatism and economic, moral, and spiritual liberation.