Yves Thériault
Yves Thériault was a prominent Canadian author born on November 28, 1915, in Quebec City, with French-Acadian and Montagnais Indian heritage. Despite a challenging early education, he became a self-taught writer, balancing various jobs while honing his craft in Montreal. Thériault gained recognition for his prolific output, which included over a thousand short stories and more than thirty novels. His literary debut, a short story collection titled *Contes pour un homme seul*, was published in 1944, followed by significant works such as *Agaguk* in 1958, which explores themes of cultural conflict and identity through the story of a nomadic Eskimo confronting modernity.
Thériault's writing often features protagonists grappling with external pressures and the struggle for freedom, reflecting his complex views on heritage and assimilation. His contributions to literature earned him numerous accolades, including the Governor General's Award for Fiction and election to the Royal Society of Canada. Additionally, he served in a cultural role within the Ministry of Indian Affairs in the mid-1960s. Thériault passed away in 1983, leaving behind a legacy celebrated for its depth and cultural insight.
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Subject Terms
Yves Thériault
Author
- Born: November 28, 1915
- Birthplace: Quebec City, Quebec, Canada
- Died: October 20, 1983
- Place of death: Rawdon, Quebec, Canada
Biography
Yves Thériault was born to Alcide and Aurore Nadeau Thériault on November 28, 1915, in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. Although he is primarily of French-Acadian descent, his paternal grandfather was a Montagnais Indian, and Theriault learned to speak Montagnais Cree from his father. Thériault also learned English while attending school, although he always disliked formal education. Moving with his family to Montreal at an early age, Thériault worked at self-education and a series of odd jobs, such as cheese salesman, bartender, truck driver, and trapper.
For almost twenty-five years, until the mid-1960’s, Thériault worked for several radio and television stations as a writer, concurrently publishing short stories in the Montreal newspaper Le Jour. At the newspaper, he met a secretary, Germaine-Michelle Blanchet, whom he married in 1942, and the couple later had two children. In 1945, Thériault and his wife answered an advertisement for writers of “ten- cent” novels, and they soon became extremely efficient at cranking out stories very quickly, under pseudonyms, to increase their pay. In fact, Thériault wrote more than a thousand tales and more than thirteen hundred play scripts, most of which have never been printed.
Thériault’s first credited book was the short- story collection Contes pour un homme seul, published in 1944, which was followed by other collections of stories, such as Le Vendeur d’etoiles et autres contes (1961), L’Ille introuvable (1968), and Valère et le grand canot (1981). Thériault’s true literary reputation, however, rests with his novels, with about thirty novels published during his life.
His first novel, La Fille laide, was published in 1950, with others following rapidly. His most famous and significant novel, Agaguk, was published in 1958, and an English translation with the same title appeared in 1963. The novel deals with a nomadic Eskimo in northern Canada struggling between assimilating into modern “white” culture and maintaining his ethnic heritage. This theme of a lone protagonist fighting for some type of freedom, often without success, against larger external powers, runs throughout Thériault’s novels, whether they be about residents of urban Montreal, frontier Native Americans, or Acadian settlers.
Thériault was extensively celebrated and recognized for his body of work. He received the Pix de la Province de Quebec in 1958, the Prix France-Canada in 1961, and the Governor General’s Award for Fiction in 1973. He was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 1959, served a term as president of the Societe des Ecrivains Canadiens in 1964, and was honored with the Molson Prixe in 1971 and the Prix David in 1979. From 1965 to 1967, Thériault served as the director of cultural affairs in the Ministry of Indian Affairs. He died in Rawdon, Quebec, in 1983.