Francophone literature in Canada is neither monolithic nor the work of a single region. It is a living and breathing presence across the country, showcasing the diversity of Canada’s francophone communities and the people who live there.
From Vancouver to Bouctouche, Sudbury to Montréal, even via Miami, Cape Cod or Paris, five outstanding Canadian authors have shaped our collective imagination: Marie-Claire Blais, Jean Marc Dalpé, Dany Laferrière, Antonine Maillet and Marguerite-A. Primeau.
Their acclaimed novels, poetry, plays and essays offer a rich and vivid portrayal of the Canadian francophone experience in a homegrown body of French literature filled with real-world characters – the working class, resilient women and people forced into exile. These unique works explore ever-current themes such as northernness, identity-building and immigration.
In this stamp issue, Canada Post is proud to recognize the outstanding contribution of five writers who, through their unique perspectives, have enriched Canadian francophone literature.
Marie-Claire Blais
Marie-Claire Blais (1939-2021) was born and raised in the working-class Québec neighbourhood of Limoilou. Before turning 20, she wrote her first novel, La belle bête (1959; Mad Shadows, 1960), whose raw language – new to Quebec writing at the time – made it an instant Quebec classic. But she really made her mark in 1966 when Une saison dans la vie d’Emmanuel (1965; A Season in the Life of Emmanuel, 1966) won France’s Prix Médicis, becoming the first Canadian writer do so. The novel has since been translated into more than a dozen languages and discussed in over 2,000 books, essays, articles, reviews and interviews.
Blais’ novels, plays, scripts and poems, known for their lyricism and complexity, depict a harsh world that can also be full of tenderness and compassion. During a prolific career, she received numerous awards, including four Governor General’s Literary Awards.
Jean Marc Dalpé
Jean Marc Dalpé was born in 1957 in Ottawa, Ontario. He is a playwright, actor, poet, novelist and translator, and a leading figure in the Franco-Ontarian cultural movement. In 1979, he cofounded Théâtre de la Vieille 17, which is dedicated to developing French-language theatre in Ontario. He moved to Sudbury in 1982 to work with Théâtre du Nouvel-Ontario, and then to Montréal in 1989, where he taught at the National Theatre School of Canada.
Dalpé’s writing explores the alienation of minorities. His plays Hawkesbury Blues (1982) and 1932, la ville du Nickel (1984), a love story set in a mining town, draw on the history of the Franco-Ontarian working class. Dalpé is the recipient of three Governor General’s Literary Awards, including one for his novel Un vent se lève qui éparpille (1999; Scattered in a Rising Wind, 2003).
Dany Laferrière
Dany Laferrière was born in 1953 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Raised by his grandmother in Petit-Goâve, he fled to Montréal in 1976 to escape the Haitian dictatorship. He soon bought his famous Remington 22 and began to write after long days at the factory. In November 1985, Laferrière published his first novel, Comment faire l’amour avec un nègre sans se fatigue (How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired). It was a resounding success around the world, especially in English-speaking countries, where he was compared to Charles Bukowski and Henry Miller.
Laferrière’s unique depiction of everyday life paints a vivid picture of the human condition, and his autobiographical and poetic novels have established him as a major chronicler of his time. In November 2015, he published Tout ce qu’on ne te dira pas, Mongo (Everything They Won’t Tell You, Mongo, 2015) a novel he described as a 300-page love letter to Quebec. His internationally translated works have won him numerous honours, including a Governor General’s Literary Award for Je suis fou de Vava (2006). In 2013, he became the first Haitian and the first Canadian elected to the Académie française.
Antonine Maillet
Antonine Maillet (born 1929 in Bouctouche, New Brunswick) is renowned for her passion for the Acadian identity, language and customs. She has written in Acadian French ever since her first novel, Pointe-aux-Coques (1958). However, it was with La Sagouine in 1971, a collection of old Acadian monologues in tribute to the region’s oral tradition, that she rose to prominence. That same year, she published Rabelais et les traditions populaires en Acadie, her PhD thesis on the links between Rabelais’s work and Acadian folklore.
Her 1979 novel Pélagie-la-Charrette (Pélagie: The Return to Acadie, 2004), about Acadians’ return home after being deported by the British in 1755, won France’s prestigious Prix Goncourt. Maillet, who garnered many distinctions in her career, was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1976 and promoted to Companion in 1981.
Marguerite-A. Primeau
Marguerite-A. Primeau (1914-2011) was a pioneer in western Canadian French literature, born in Saint-Paul-des-Métis (now St. Paul), Alberta. Socially conscious and independent, she chose to write in her mother tongue about the realities of francophone life in her region. Her elegant and sober style reveals the daily lives of her characters, their hopes and disappointments, their loss of reference and isolation.
Her first novel, Dans le muskeg (1960), recounts the founding of a francophone village in northern Alberta and the struggles to preserve its language and culture. She revisits the same community in her second novel, Maurice Dufault, sous-directeur (1983), set against the backdrop of oil discovery in Alberta. Primeau also published two collections of short stories, a genre she pursued until 2005. Long favoured by critics, Primeau’s work has in recent years received the attention it deserves.