English: Hon. P. J. O. Chauveau, Montreal, QC, 1863 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Biographical Notes

This information is available in Wikipedia and in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, but should have been included at the beginning of my blog.

Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau (May 30, 1820 – April 4, 1890), born in Charlesbourg, near Quebec City, was

• the first Premier of the Canadian province of Quebec following the establishment of the Dominion of Canada in 1867;
• founder of Confederation;
• a lawyer by profession, and practiced in Quebec City;
• the co-founder of the  Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste of Quebec City in 1842, a nationalistic society that exists to this day.
• He was elected to the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada in 1844, and reelected in 1848, 1851, and 1854.
• He was solicitor-general of Lower Canada, without a seat in cabinet, from 1851 to 1853;
• From 1855 to 1867, he was superintendent of the bureau of Education.
• In 1867, he was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Quebec in Québec-Comté electoral district and headed a Conservative government as the first Premier of Quebec.
• He was also the Minister of Education and Provincial Secretary.
• Also beginning in 1867, he was simultaneously the federal Member of Parliament for the riding of Quebec County (such “double mandates” were abolished in 1874).
• He was appointed Speaker of the Canadian Senate on February 21, 1873.
• In 1878, he became professor of Roman law at Université Laval.
• He was President of the Royal Society of Canada in 1883-1884.
• He died April 4 in Quebec City in 1890. He had seven children, one of which, Alexandre Chauveau, became a provincial politician in his own right.

Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau is also the author of:

• Voyage du Prince de Galles [the Prince of Wales] en Amérique;
• L’Instruction publique au Canada (Public Education in Canada);[i]
• F.-X. Garneau, sa vie et ses œuvres (a biography of historian François Xavier Garneau (This life and times of…);
• L’Abbé Holmes et ses conférences de Notre-Dame (Father Holmes and his Notre-Dame Speeches).

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