Michel Bibaud

French-Canadian author

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History

Michel Bibaud (born Jan. 19, 1782, Côte des Neiges, near Montreal [Quebec, Can.]—died Aug. 3, 1857, Montreal) was the author of French Canada’s first volume of poetry and of a pioneering history of French Canada.

Educated at the Collège Saint-Raphael, Bibaud became a schoolteacher and journalist. He wrote an arithmetic textbook and edited periodicals, of which La Bibliothèque canadienne, containing his own historical writing, was the best known. His most important historical work, Histoire du Canada, sous la domination française (1837), was the first history of French Canada written by a French Canadian. It covers the period from the founding of Canada to 1731; a second volume (1844) brings the story to 1830. (A third volume, treating events from 1830 to 1837, was published by his son in 1878.)

Bibaud’s history was poorly received in his time, for it was unimaginative and reflected pro-British sympathies. Though some of his sources were undigested, Bibaud’s observations provide a good record of the period. Bibaud’s poetry collection Épîtres, satires, chansons, épigrammes, et autres pièces de vers (1830) was the first in French Canadian literature; it includes four satires on ignorance, avarice, laziness, and envy.