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Pierre Chauveau Medal
- 2011 - Robert Ladouceur
- 2010 - John Peter Oleson, FRSC
- 2005 - Shana Poplack, FRSC
- 2003 - Gilles Bibeau, MSRC
- 2001 - Paul-Hubert Poirier, MSRC
- 1999 - Michael Millgate, FRSC
- 1997 - Jacques Henripin, MSRC
- 1995 - Vaïra Vìkis-Freibergs, MSRC
- 1993 - Bernard Beugnot, MSRC
- 1991 - Guy Rocher, MSRC
- 1989 - John M. Robson, FRSC
- 1987 - Benoît Lacroix, MSRC
- 1985 - Erich B. Von Richthofen, FRSC
- 1983 - Balachandra Rajan
- 1981 - George P. Grant, FRSC
- 1979 - Kathleen Coburn
- 1976 - Edward Togo Salmon
- 1974 - Wilfred Cantwell Smith
- 1972 - Louis-Edmond Hamelin, MSRC
- 1970 - Northrop Frye
- 1968 - B. Wilkinson
- 1966 - Louis-Philippe Audet
- 1965 - Robert Charbonneau
- 1964 - Léo-Albert Lévesque
- 1963 - Arthur Maheux
- 1962 - Maurice Lebel, MSRC
- 1961 - Gérard Malchelosse
- 1960 - F.C.A. Jeanneret, MSRC
- 1959 - Harry Bernard
- 1957 - Claude Melançon
- 1956 - Victor Morin
- 1955 - Jean-Marie Gauvreau
- 1954 - Gérard Morisset
- 1953 - B.K. Sandwell
- 1952 - Pierre Daviault
Top of Page2011 - Robert Ladouceur
La productivité scientifique de Robert Ladouceur n'a cessé de croître au cours des années. Il a publié plus de 350 articles scientifiques, présenté 400 communications scientifiques et publié 10 volumes dont certains ont été traduits en anglais, espagnol, et italien. Déjà en 1975, il recevait une première subvention du Conseil de recherche médicale du Canada pour étudier une méthode d'intervention visant à éliminer les problèmes phobiques. Depuis ce temps, il a reçu plus de 75 subventions de recherches d'organismes provinciaux, nationaux et internationaux. Son enseignement a porté sur les thérapies comportementales et cognitives. Il a aussi assumé plusieurs cours sur les diverses méthodologies de recherche en psychologie. Clinique. Ses travaux sur les jeux de hasard et d'argent (gambling) sont internationalement connus. A deux reprises, il a présenté ses travaux aux membres de la commission présidentielle américaine qui étudie les impacts du jeu, commission présidée par Bill Clinton. En 1996, il a reçu le Research Award du National Council on Problem Gambling, distinction remise par les américains pour souligner le meilleur chercheur dans le domaine du Jeu. En 2003, il a reçu le prix "Senior Research Award" remis par l'École de Médecine de la prestigieuse Université Harvard, comme le chercheur international qui s'est le plus distingué dans le domaine du Jeu. Monsieur Ladouceur est également un communicateur exceptionnel. Il a présenté des conférences et animé des ateliers de formation dans la plupart des provinces, canadiennes et des états américains. Il a aussi fait des conférences en Europe, en Asie, en Australie et en Nouvelle Zélande.
2010 - John Peter Oleson, FRSC
Professor John Peter Oleson, FRSC, Distinguished Professor of Greek and Roman Studies at the University of Victoria has published extensively in a wide variety of fields associated with Classical Archaeology and Ancient Technology. His field work has involved desert sites in Jordan, Roman harbours, and deep water Roman shipwrecks.
2005 - Shana Poplack, FRSC
Professor Shana Poplack, FRSC, Distinguished University Professor and Canada Research Chair in the Department of Linguistics, University of Ottawa, is the foremost proponent of linguistic variation theory in Canada today. An impeccably scientific approach, characterized by the extensive collection of pertinent data, analytic rigour, and clarity of vision, coupled with an insistence on historical, social and geographic perspective, has led her to develop new and controversial positions that have gained wide currency. She enunciated and tested the first general syntactic constraints on code-switching in bilingual communities. Her field research on diaspora varieties of nineteenth-century African American English provided the first scientific evidence for the identification of Black English, not as a creole, but as an archaic dialect of English which has resisted mainstream linguistic change due to the geographical and social segregation of its speakers. She elucidated the relation between variability and linguistic function in Hispanic vernaculars and in Canadian French. She scientifically documented the role of community and individual bilingualism in linguistic change, effectively debunking the idea that most of the “changes” considered corruptions of Canadian French were imposed by post-settlement contacts with English. Her studies of Ottawa-Hull French, African Nova Scotian English, 19th century Québec French, and numerous Canadian immigrant communities qualify her as the individual who has contributed most profoundly to our knowledge of the diversity of Canadian speech. In the course of an international career as a much sought-after keynote speaker and invited professor, Poplack has simultaneously trained in Ottawa a generation of researchers, many of whom are now internationally recognized in their own right. She has created and maintained, for over 20 years, one of the leading sociolinguistics research laboratories in the world.
2003 - Gilles Bibeau, MSRC
Gilles Bibeau, MSRC, specializes in medical anthropology and therapeutic practices in Africa and India. He is involved in the study of physical and mental health and associated popular beliefs and practices, the knowledge and remedies of medical practitioners, and public health systems. He believes that such study must be conducted comparatively in several societies and must be transcultural, especially given that migrations creolize the cultures of our multiethnic societies. With this perspective in mind, he oversaw the creation of international networks for exchanges between experts of various disciplines, and between universities in four Latin American countries for the study of social determinants of health and health care management, as well as the International Network for Ethnoepidemiology and Community Mental Health, which consists of anthropologists and psychiatrists from Canada, Africa, Latin America and India. Interdisciplinary health research supported by Gilles Bibeau brings together teams of anthropologists, doctors, psychiatrists, and specialists in others areas of human science. These teams are affiliated with organizations such as GIRAME, an inter-university group conducting research in anthropology and ethnopsychiatry, and ERASME, a mental health and cultural research and action team. The research and publications of these organizations have made Montreal an internationally recognized centre for the study of health care.
2001 - Paul-Hubert Poirier, MSRC
Named to the Royal Society of Canada in 1990, Paul-Hubert Poirier, MSRC was a Killam Fellow (1988-90) and received the Prix André-Laurendeau from the Association canadienne-française pour l'avancement des sciences that same year. He is director of the Institut d'études anciennes and professor in the Faculty of Theology and Religious Sciences at Université Laval, and one of the most eminent specialists in the areas of Christianity and Patristic studies. After studying in Québec, Strasbourg and Paris, he dedicated his research to the origins of Christianity, and the literature of the ancient Christian Near East. He is the author of nine works, has published over thirty-five articles in scientific journals, as many contributions to collective works, and close to 150 critical reviews and literature surveys. From 1980 to 1998, he directed the publication of the Canadian edition of the Coptic texts discovered in Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt in 1945. Today, he remains one of the principal researchers on the subject matter. The continued invitations he receives to participate in national and international scientific colloquiums, conferences and lectures, coupled with those to participate in national and international organizations, are eloquent testaments to the high esteem in which he is held both in Canada and around the world. Currently, he is the President of the Académie des lettres et des sciences humaines.
1999 - Michael Millgate, FRSC
Michael Millgate, University Professor of English Emeritus, University of Toronto, is one of the leading textual scholars, critics, and biographers working in the field of English literature today. Over some thirty years he has published major editions and books on Thomas Hardy (including seven volumes of letters) and William Faulkner, and is a world authority on both authors, as well as a highly respected commentator on their contemporaries. His techniques as editor and biographer are models. Excerpts from his publications have appeared steadily in collections, and he has continued to receive important research grants and fellowships throughout his career.
1997 - Jacques Henripin, MSRC
Jacques Henripin, Université de Montréal, is a pioneer of demographic research in Canada. He was responsible for the creation of the Demographics Department at the Université de Montréal which has educated numerous Canadian demographers. His main areas of research include differences in infant mortality among various social classes, fecundity (probably his main field of research), future population perspectives, the demographic evolution of ethnic and linguistic groups in Canada, the cost of raising children, the politics of population, changes in the birth rate, the role of immigration, and adaptation to aging. Jacques Henripin has often acted upon his interest in the problems of society and participated publicly in controversial debates concerning the politics of population.
1995 - Vaïra Vìkis-Freibergs, MSRC
As a psycholinguist, the impact that Vaïra Vìkis-Freibergs has made in the field of social sciences is considerable. Since 1976, her comparative analyses carried out with her husband, Imants Freibergs, Professor in computers at the Université du Québec à Montréal, permitted the verification of the universality of certain theoretical positions. Her critical evaluation of the application of the stochastic parameters as proposed by Herbert Simon (Vìkis-Freibergs 1972) is still cited today and gave rise to further studies in the United States, Spain, Czechoslovakia, Venezuela, Poland and Latvia.
Her recent studies on the structure of poetic images, metonymy, and metaphor have been published in learned journals on regional studies and comparative literature, as well as in prestigious international reviews. These studies have produced three volumes, the first of which was published in collaboration with her husband in 1988 and entitled Saules-Dainas/Chansons du soleil lettones. Two others appeared in 1989: Dzintara Kalna (Sur la montagne d'ambre) and Linguistics and Poetics of Latvian Folk Songs.
1993 - Bernard Beugnot, MSRC
Bernard Beugnot, Killam Award winner and former head of the Université de Montréal's French Studies Department, is a prominent specialist on seventeenth century France. His work, since 1967, concerning Guez de Balzac has earned him international renown. He has revised studies on dialogue, treatment, letters, and such phenomena as retreat and curiosity. He is also an expert on the plays of Anouilh, the poems of Ponge and the work of Hubert Aquin. Dr. Beugnot is interested in both written works (edition, genetics, rhetoric, poetry) and their acceptance, the evolution of styles, the history of ideas, mentalities and culture. He is a strict but open-minded humanist, classical and modern.
1991 - Guy Rocher, MSRC
Citation available in French only.
1989 - John M. Robson, FRSC
Professor Robson is the Textual and General Editor of the thirty-three volume Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, an edition internationally welcomed as a critical and editorial model for other large and complex projects. A whole new interpretation of the thought of Mill has resulted from his monumental edition, which was initiated in the late 1950s.
The eminence of the Mill project has led to Professor Robson being asked to advise on and guide other large editorial projects, among them the Disraeli letters, the editions of Jeremy Bentham, Bertrand Russell, and A.M. Klein, and the Centre for Editing Early Canadian Texts. For thirty years Professor Robson has been a productive and recognized scholar in nineteenth-century British letters and thought, with writings on Mill and Bentham, and also on Charles Dickens, George Eliot, editing, rhetoric, and social history.
Born in Toronto, he received his BA., MA., and Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. He is active in numerous scholarly offices and has a lengthy publication record. He was appointed University Professor at the University of Toronto in 1986.
1987 - Benoît Lacroix, MSRC
Citation available in French only.
1985 - Erich B. Von Richthofen, FRSC
Erich von Richthofen is without a doubt one of the most distinguished medieval scholars living today, internationally renowned for his research and publications, admired and indeed beloved for his teaching. Professor von Richthofen enjoys a well deserved and world wide reputation as a leading scholar in the field of Romance Philology, a field which he has enriched with his solid knowledge of Germanic and Classical literature and with his ability to use this knowledge for a deeper understanding of the varied literary topics that he has researched. He is best known for his studies on the nature and evolution of the epic genre in medieval Europe, but his most significant contribution to the advancement of knowledge is, perhaps, his development and critical application of the concept of literary syncretism. Implicit in most of his work, the concept of literary syncretism has helped Professor von Richthofen to develop new criteria and a new methodology for a comparative analysis of literary texts, which has allowed him to offer a truly original and enlightening interpretation of several literary works and some literary movements. Although generally known as a great hispanist, because of his work on Paul Valéry, Dante, and many other topics, Professor von Richthofen is also considered an authority in French and Italian literature. His years of outstanding service, marked by the all-encompassing breadth of his humanistic vision and the perceptive depth of his host of publications, have brought high acclaim to Medieval Studies in Canada. A humanist in the true sense of the word and a giant among Romance scholars, his career stands as a brilliant example and an impressive challenge to colleagues and students alike. Canada's scholarship is very much in his debt.
1983 - Balachandra Rajan
Balachandra Rajan is - among other things - a literary critic and scholar of world-wide reputation in the study of Milton and the English literary Renaissance and is equally a pre-eminent interpreter of the best-known twentieth-century poets in the English language, Yeats and Eliot.
Before coming to Canada he distinguished himself through his contributions to the humanities, particularly with Unesco. In the approximately twenty years he has s pent in Canada, during most of which he has been a Canadian citizen, he has not only vastly enriched our own academic scene, exercising tremendous influence on students and colleagues in his own university and far beyond, but has also continued to extend his reputation, through publications, editing, and other work, and to exert an influence which can be described as seminal throughout the English-speaking world.
1981 - George P. Grant, FRSC
George P. Grant, FRSC, of Dalhousie University, has been awarded the Chauveau Medal for his remarkable contribution to the humanities in Canada. Born in Toronto in 1918, he was carried to Queen's by his studies, then to Oxford, where he obtained a Doctorate of Philosophy (Theology). His work has been that of a profound, sensitive, penetrating analyst and interpreter of our country's modern life, and of the changes through which we are fatefully going; and one who in addition to being critic proffers a vision by which a higher alternative comes into view and indeed becomes intellectually cogent. He is one of our leading thinkers in that he has led us, his writings have stirred the rest of us, to be thinkers, at a deep and ultimate level, about the contemporary processes of our nation and our world and not merely participants in or spectators or victims of them. One person expresses the view that 'it is a significant commentary on Canadian social science that what is probably the most important writing on Canadian Society in the post-war period is by a scholar - George Grant - who is not nominally a social scientist.' Philosopher in the classic sense, political theorist in the highest sense, social critic in the most challenging sense, Grant has contributed not only to the humanities in Canada but to the humanity of Canada.
1979 - Kathleen Coburn
Miss Coburn's scholarly and critical study of the work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, carried out without intermission over a period of more than forty-five years, is a remarkable feat of single-minded devotion and sustained vision. The twentieth-century recognition of Coleridge as one of the most powerful and versatile intelligences that England has ever produced can be dated from John Livingston Lowes's The Road to Xanadu (1927). The patient and sensitive exploration of Coleridge's mind and work, however, has grown - both directly and indirectly - largely out of Kathleen Coburn's work; and for twenty years or more all other work on Coleridge has had to be referred, sooner or later, to the authority and scope of her work.
Learned and sensitive student of literature and a gifted writer, Kathleen Coburn is also a philosopher and Germanist by training, a deeply informed psychologist by avocation, and an artist by instinct. Her editorial work is more than a technical triumph: it has always been marked by imaginative flair in unusual combination with the most scrupulous principles of scholarship, and has been sustained with a sense of delight that transforms authority into a civilized infection.
If the totality of Coleridge's mind cannot be grasped by a divided mind, so the reconstruction of his thought and imagination cannot be attempted from incomplete or impoverished witnesses. Coleridge's Notebooks, the richest and most revealing of his personal manuscripts, had never been studied by anybody outside the Coleridge family until in 1931 Kathleen Coburn - with no intention of seeking such a privilege or of assuming such a formidable responsibility - was invited by the Coleridge family to edit them. Beyond the Notebooks there were copious manuscripts to be assembled, studied, coordinated, including manuscript notes in hundreds of printed books. From the beginning, the whole compass of Coleridge's published and manuscript writing has been within her purview; and it was from manuscripts hitherto unknown to scholars that she made her brilliant reconstruction of the Philosophical Lectures (1949), and from unpublished manuscripts and little-known published materials that she made the elegant and incisive sketch of Coleridge's thought called Inquiring Spirit (1951). After twenty-five years of painstaking work of a kind that had no clear precedent, she published the first double volume (of five) of the Notebooks (1957). The edition, with three volumes published and the fourth almost ready for the press, has been acclaimed, wherever Coleridge studies are cherished, for its grace, economy, accuracy, learning, and zest.
Her relations with other scholars - not only with her closest associates - have always been marked by the gift of friendship and by generosity. Not only has her lively interest in people enriched her writing with much curious and affectionate detail, but she has herself made notable contributions to the resources of Coleridge studies. Through her personal tact and by the compelling force of her disinterestedness, she secured for study in perpetuity the two great Coleridge family collections of manuscripts and books - the one in the British Museum (1951), the other in Victoria College, Toronto (1954). As General Editor of the Collected Coleridge - a project which she herself devised and made possible - she has shown the same thoroughness and ingenuity that typifies her own work, and has placed her attention and unique learning at the disposal of the editors almost at the level of direct collaboration. Although the Collected Coleridge will be a landmark in providing modern editions of all Coleridge's published works and of some bodies of unpublished material, it is secondary in scope and originality to the edition of the Notebooks; yet I.A. Richards has spoken of it as ‘one of the noblest, most arduous, and most promising enterprises of our time.’
Canadian by descent and birth, and incorrigibly Canadian in loyalty and sensibility, Kathleen Coburn has always found in her work an international ambience. She has invited as editors of the Collected Coleridge an equal number of scholars from Canada, Britain, and the United States. It is no accident that two years ago she received an honorary degree from Cambridge University, that she is now lecturing in Japan, and that in a few weeks' time she will deliver the Alexander Lectures in Toronto.
Kathleen Coburn's work tacitly affirms that scholarship of the highest order requires nothing less than all the human capacities that an exceptionally endowed, and an exceptionally devoted, person can command. It is right to recognize and honour her as a person of superlative ability, fine modesty, disciplined imagination, and a most generous humanity by awarding her the Pierre Chauveau Medal.
1976 - Edward Togo Salmon
Edward Togo Salmon has added lustre to Canada in the field of humanistic studies. By his writing, teaching, research, and constant communion with his peers all over the world, he has learned and taught the nature of the classical world, and by his pedagogic excellence has made a lesson of it. He has been a pioneer in his writing about pre-Roman Italy, and has revealed hitherto neglected or unknown dimensions of the Roman Republic. He has been described in one of the many citations that have honoured him in the world of learning as "a scholar's scholar," but he is more than that. Cicerone through the landscape of ancient Italy, he is also a conductor, a veritable Toscanini of his craft and art. His students are testimony to his worth. His most recent work, The Nemesis of Empire, caused him much travail, comparing as it does the decline of his beloved commonwealth with the tragedy of the imperial system of Rome. Scholars have acclaimed this work so highly that it has become the keystone of his career. But that is not so. Rather this fine book serves as a bridge and an inspiration for the course of classical studies in this present world. Humanistic disciplines have burgeoned everywhere because of his direction and example but have flowered particularly at McMaster University where he served well and meritoriously as professor, principal, and vice president. Graduate programmes in the Humanities, not least in Roman studies, were vigorously promoted; Italian studies were given fresh identity; a collection of paintings, sculptures, and drawings was initiated; and the Mills Memorial Library grew to match the university's and the nation's needs.
A litany of his services and accomplishments has been recorded elsewhere. Let us close with the traditional salutation reserved for men of achievement who have earned signal respect and affection: Vivat. Vivat. Ad multos annos.
1974 - Wilfred Cantwell Smith
Wilfred Cantwell Smith has made an outstanding contribution to the comparative study of religion and in particular to the study of Islam. He graduated from the University of Toronto in 1938 in oriental languages and subsequently was awarded his Ph.D. from Princeton in the same subject. His training in theology was received at Westminster College, Cambridge. He began his academic career teaching Islamic and Indian history at Forman Christian College in Lahore. During the same period, from 1940 to 1949, he was representative among Muslims of the Canadian Overseas Missions Council. This was a period in the history of the Indian subcontinent when the interconnection of history, religion, and politics must have seemed particularly striking.
Whether or not his background in the overseas missionary field combined with his training in history and language to produce the major characteristics of his scholarly activity must be a matter of speculation. The fact remains that he has approached the study of religion through both the study of history and a searching examination of the nature of faith. When he came to McGill in 1949 as Birks Professor of Comparative Religion it was natural that he should create an Institute of Islamic Studies. The character of the Institute at McGill from its beginning reflected his own conception of its role. It was to combine rigorous scholarship with a bringing together of a variety of intellectual disciplines. At the same time it embodied his own views of the nature of scholarly activity. He abjured the fanfare, bureaucratization, and publicity hunger which often infect such enterprises. Instead, he imposed on it his own austere, rigorous, and scholarly standards.
In 1964, very much to the regret of his colleagues at McGill, he was drawn to Harvard as professor and director of the Centre for the Study of World Religions. By that time the fruits of his work at McGill were well known, and his scholarly work was in full flower. After a distinguished career in the United States he returned to Canada in 1973 as McCulloch Professor of Religion at Dalhousie. Even during his American exile, he continued to nourish his Canadian roots. He was a faithful attender of the Royal Society, to which he had been elected in 1961, and served as President of Section II in 1972-3.
His major contribution to Islamic scholarship, Islam in Modern History, seeks to understand how the world's various religious traditions see their own history. In his view the study of history leads to an understanding of both man's nature and his greatest potential, and thus history must comprehend the interrelationship of the transcendental and the mundane. Any view of history which denies the importance of the transcendental is both incomplete and inadequate. Hence his unsympathetic view of historical materialism, as well as of those religious scholars who have rediscovered Nietzsche's assertion that God is dead.
Faith, and the nature of faith, thus become for him the central problem in understanding both religion and the nature of man in the continuum of man's comprehension of theological questions. These matters have been explored in his widely read The Meaning and End of Religion, The Faith of Other Men, and other works. His high reputation in the world of scholarship richly deserves the award of the Chauveau Medal by the Royal Society of Canada in recognition of that achievement.
1972 - Louis-Edmond Hamelin, MSRC
Citation available in French only.
1970 - Northrop Frye
Citation available in French only.
1968 - B. Wilkinson
(Bilingual citation) C'est avec grand plaisir que le comité Chauveau a attribué sa médaille cette année au professeur B. Wilkinson. Dois-je faire l'éloge de celui-ci ? N'est-il pas assez connu de la plupart d'entre vous pour qu'il ne soit pas nécessaire de vous rappeler la qualité de son œuvre. Laissez-moi néanmoins vous en donner ici un aperçu.
Professeur à l'Université de Toronto, M. Wilkinson est un médiéviste de renom. Il est aussi vice-président de la Mediaeval Academy of America. Toute sa vie, il s'est consacré à l'étude du moyen-âge, cette époque que certains ont trop souvent vilipendée au XIXe, siècle, en particulier - ce siècle que Léon Daudet avec sa verve caustique ordinaire a appelé le « stupide XIXe, siècle » . M. Wilkinson a étudié en profondeur la littérature, l'histoire et l'évolution constitutionnelle de cette lointaine époque, qui a laissé d’extraordinaires témoignages dans la philosophie, les arts, l'architecture et les lettres d'Occident. Il s'est efforcé d'en reconstituer l'atmosphère en Angleterre, en particulier, dans des livres, des articles, des essais qui ont consacré sa réputation. Comme me le disait avec beaucoup de chaleur le charmant homme qu'est le président Kirkconnell : « Mr. Wilkinson is a world authority in the constitutional history of England in the mediaeval period » .
M. Wilkinson, Pierre J. 0. Chauveau aimait les humanités et les humanistes. Il aurait sûrement approuvé notre choix.
Après avoir fait l'éloge du récipiendaire de la médaille, je m'en voudrais de ne pas évoquer le souvenir de celui dont elle rappelle le nom. Pierre J. 0. Chauveau a été un des membres-fondateurs de notre Société et son premier vice-président, à l'époque où le Sénat accueillait sa première réunion à Ottawa. Mais ce n'est pas à cause de cela que fut créée la médaille. Ce n'est pas non plus parce que Chauveau a été pendant presque toute sa vie un homme politique auquel la chance a souri. Il était député à 24 ans, ministre dans l'équipe Hinks-Morin en 1851. En 1867, il formait à Québec le premier cabinet après la Confédération. Il fut aussi président du Sénat, jusqu'au moment où repris par la politique, il vint se faire battre par un des innombrables Tremblay du comté de Charlevois. Il n'avait pu tenir tête à un candidat plus jeune que lui et qui avait fait sa campagne en invoquant le témoignage de Victor Hugo contre les tyrans. Quelques années plus tôt, Hugo s'était attaqué à celui qu'il appelait le Napoléon le petit, par opposition à l'autre, le grand. Tremblay, lui, citait Hugo à pleines pages d'alexandrins devant ces ruraux ravis de ses envolées, même s'ils n'y comprenaient pas grand-chose.
Si Chauveau a eu une vie politique aventureuse, il a été surtout un homme cultivé. Et c'est cela que la Société a voulu rappeler. Chauveau a beaucoup lu, beaucoup écrit : des vers, des biographies comme celles de François Xavier Garneau, d'Ozanam et, surtout, des discours où le charme de son esprit se donnait libre cours. Il avait aussi une collection de livres restée fameuse et dont la bibliothèque de l'Assembléé législative a fait l'achat après sa mort survenue en 1890. On y trouve quelques incunables, des auteurs classique et les œuvres de très nombreux écrivains canadiens. Chauveau les a lus, mais il les a annotés et classés avec amour. On a un catalogue écrit de sa main, que vous aimerez peut-être consulter un jour que vous vous rendrez à Québec : cette ville charmante où l'ancien côtoie le nouveau, où Chauveau habitait une bien jolie maison, datant de 1665, où un hôpital détient sa charte de Louis XIII et ses biens de la duchesse d'Aiguillon et de Louis XIV. Quand Chauveau habitait à Québec, le soir après avoir quitté le parlement, il allait d'un pas lent vers la terrasse Dufferin contempler le spectacle splendide de l;Ile d'Orléans et de la côte de Beauport. Peut-être un jour, irez-vous vous-mêmes. A gauche, derrière la ville se trouve Charlesbourg, petit village où Chauveau est né, il y a un siècle et demi. Et si vous montez plus haut, vous retrouverez à la Citadelle le souvenir de la princesse Louise. Elle y a peint maints paysages du haut du Cap Diamant, quand elle accompagnait le marquis de Lorne, son mari, dans ses voyages en route pour la Caspédia où il allait pêcher la truite et le saumon, après être allé rendre visite aux prêtres du Séminaire ou aux autorités de la ville et de l'Université, ou après avoir reçu quelque grand seigneur d'outremer, comme lord Carnavon qui avait contribué à la constitution du Canada.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I have great pleasure in presenting the Chauveau Medal to Dr. B. Wilkinson. By so doing, the Royal Society of Canada wishes to recall the remarkable studies of Mr. Wilkinson on mediaeval literature and constitutions. As I said before, the purpose of the Chauveau Medal is to recognize officially the value and interest of the research work made by the incumbent in the field of humanities.
1966 - Louis-Philippe Audet
Citation available in French only.
1965 - Robert Charbonneau
Citation available in French only.
1964 - Léo-Albert Lévesque
Citation available in French only.
1963 - Arthur Maheux
Citation available in French only.
1962 - Maurice Lebel, MSRC
Citation available in French only.
1961 - Gérard Malchelosse
Citation available in French only.
1960 - F.C.A. Jeanneret, MSRC
(Bilingual citation) La médaille Pierre Chauveau rappelle la mémoire d'un homme qui, s'il fut l'auteur d'un roman, a surtout consacré sa vie à la cause de l'éducation dans la province de Québec. Une des caractéristiques du système québécois d'instruction publique est l'harmonie qui règne entre le secteur français majoritaire et le secteur anglais minoritaire. En choisissant cette année M. François-Charles-Archille Jeanneret comme récipiendaire de cette médaille, la Section I de la Société royale du Canada désire rendre hommage à un grand Canadien qui, depuis plus de cinquante ans, s'est voué à la carrière de l'enseignement supérieur de la littérature française dans une université canadienne de langue anglaise et dont les initiatives fécondes ont contribué au rapprochement des esprits et des cœurs de ses compatriotes en leur révélant les trésors des deux cultures transplantées au Canada.
Son œuvre écrite est abondante : dix-neuf ouvrages consacrés à la pédagogie du français depuis les manuels élémentaires jusqu'à l'édition de textes classiques et modernes. Tous les élèves des écoles de l'Ontario, sa province natale, presque tous les étudiants des universités canadiennes sont familiers avec ces ouvrages qu'animent une pédagogie vivante, un goût sûr et une dévotion éclairée à la langue que parlait son père venu de la Chaux-de-Fonds, en Suisse romande. Cette seule partie de son œuvre mériterait déjà l'hommage que nous voulons rendre à M. Jeanneret en lui décernant cette médaille. Mais celui qui, après avoir été professeur à University College de l'Université de Toronto, en fut le principal avant de devenir le Chancelier de son université, a encore d'autres titres à notre admiration. Une visite à Québec, en 1908, lorsqu’on célébrait le troisième centenaire de la fondation de la cité de Champlain, lui révéla l'importance du fait français au Canada. S’il fit à Chicago et à la Sorbonne des études supérieures, c'est à l'Université Laval qu'il obtint son doctorat ès lettres et c'est au Couvent de Jésus-Marie à Sillery, près de Québec, qu'il organisa en 1926 les premiers d'une longue série de cours de vacances de langue française à l'intention des professeurs de français des écoles secondaires de l’Ontario. Le succès en fut si grand et les résultats si prometteurs que le Département de l'Instruction publique de la Province de Québec institua, dix ans plus tard, à Toronto, des cours de langue anglaise pour les instituteurs de langue française. Le courant d'opinion que lança M. Jeanneret est à l'origine de nombreuses autres initiatives du même genre qui ont pour but de faire se mieux comprendre ceux qui auront sur les enfants dont on leur confie l'instruction une influence irremplaçable.
La persévérance et le courage n’ont pas manqué à M. Jeanneret pour accomplir l'œuvre gigantesque dont nous voyons aujourd'hui les heureux résultats. S’il a réussi, l'an dernier, à réunir des professeurs ontariens et québécois dans un colloque bilingue tenu à Toronto pour étudier le Canada français, il pouvait sans doute se rappeler les condition, bien différentes qui prévalaient, en 1912 lorsqu’il commençait à enseigner le français. Quel chemin parcouru en moins de cinquante ans! Il y a loin du Règlement 17, qu'on promulguait alors, aux expériences qu'on a commencé de tenter, à l'instigation de M. Jeanneret, dans quelques écoles ontariennes pour l'enseignement du français à de tous jeunes élèves ontariens.
We are not alone, we whose mother tongue is French, in owing a debt of gratitude to Principal Jeanneret. His persuasive and undaunted activity, the example of his scholarship, the efficiency of his pedagogy in teaching oral French have greatly contributed to promote mutual understanding between English-speaking and French-speaking Canadians. His long and distinguished career entirely devoted to the teaching of French language and literature, and to the mutual appreciation of French and English Canadians has earned for him not only the esteem and the respect of his students and colleagues but also the greatest recognition of his efforts that a university professor can ever envisage, the chancellorship of his university. It is highly significant that this university would be that of Toronto. It is also of good omen that the presentation of the Chauveau Medal to an outstanding exponent of true Canadianism should be made when the Royal Society of Canada meets to discuss the task of Canadian universities. May we, at this time, quote Chancellor Jeanneret’s own words which fit so well with this occasion: “the study of another language opens up a whole new world, and new horizons replace narrowness of the soul; respect is substituted for prejudice, sympathetic understanding for suspicion and distrust... Surely the time has now come when every Canadian worthy of such a title should be able to speak both these languages.
We are sorry that, not having fully recovered from a recent illness Chancellor Jeanneret has been unable to come and receive this award himself. We shall remit it to his son, Mr. Marsh Jeanneret, together with our wishes for the prompt and happy recovery of his father’s health.
Vous devez être fier, monsieur, du témoignage que nous rendons à votre père en lui décernant la médaille Pierre Chauveau. Notre hommage s'adresse à l'éducateur dont la carrière a été brillante et féconde, à l'auteur dont l’œuvre est connue de milliers de Canadiens à qui il a révélé les secrets et les beautés de notre langue, au grand Canadien dont les initiatives heureuses ont incité ses compatriotes à se mieux comprendre afin de s'estimer comme des frères. Dites-lui notre regret de ne pouvoir la lui remettre et portez-lui, en fils aimant, nos vœux de prompt et complet rétablissement. Dites-lui enfin que notre pays espère compter encore longtemps sur son dévouement généreux et éclairé.
1959 - Harry Bernard
Citation available in French only.
1957 - Claude Melançon
Citation available in French only.
1956 - Victor Morin
Citation available in French only.
1955 - Jean-Marie Gauvreau
Citation available in French only.
1954 - Gérard Morisset
Citation available in French only.
1953 - B.K. Sandwell
Citation available in French only.
1952 - Pierre Daviault
Citation available in French only.