Olivar Asselin

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Olivar Asselin (November 8, 1874–April 18, 1937) was a writer and journalist in Quebec, Canada. He was a prominent nationalist, pamphleteer and polemist.

[edit] Biography

Asselin was born in Saint-Hilarion, Charlevoix, Quebec. His name was the combination of the French first name "Olivier" and the last name of Latin American independence leader Simón Bolívar. He made his primary studies in a Sainte-Flavie school and his secondary studies at the Séminaire de Rimouski. For financial reasons, his family then emigrated to the United States in 1891. There, he worked at numerous newspapers of what was then called the "French Canadian" community. He was first journalist for Le Protecteur canadien of Fall River, in 1894. A year later, he was editor of Le National of Lowell (notorious as an emigration target of Quebecers of the time) and Le Jean-Baptiste of Pawtucket. From 1896 to 1898, he was editorial secretary at La Tribune of Woonsocket.

During the Spanish-American War, he undertook a first brief military participation from 1898 to 1899. Demobilized in 1899, he moved to Montreal and collaborated to various papers, including Les Débats. On August 3, 1902, he married Alice Le Bouthillier. From 1901 to 1903, he was secretary to Minister of Colonization Lomer Gouin. He stood as a nationalist candidate in Terrebonne during the 1904 election, then in Saint-Jacques in the 1911 election. In 1907, after a session of the Legislative Assembly of Quebec had ended, he came down from the press gallery to confront Premier of Quebec Louis-Alexandre Taschereau on the Assembly floor. He was upset over an allegation the Premier supposedly made about him during the session, implicating him in an affair over a false telegram. Asselin told him it was false, but Taschereau refused to admit he made such an allegation. Asselin slapped him in the face, earning him a stay in jail. The imprisonment was notably criticized by Henri Bourassa.

From 1902 to 1910, he worked closely with Henri Bourassa and contributed with him to the foundation of Le Devoir in 1910. He was President of the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society of Montreal from 1913 to 1914. A nationalist militant, he set up the Ligue nationaliste in March 1903 and launched the newspaper Le Nationaliste a year later. In 1905, he began a campaign in favour of public compulsory education (it would become law under Premier Adélard Godbout in the 1940s). During World War I, in 1915, he enrolled himself in the Canadian Expeditionary Force and recruited volunteers to form the 163rd Battalion. He was decorated with the Légion d'honneur by France in 1919. In 1930, he became the editor-in-chief of Le Canada and founded, five years later, his own newspapers named L'Ordre and La Renaissance. Olivar Asselin died in 1937, in Montreal, at the age of 62 years old.