Elzéar Bédard

Mayor Elzéar Bédard
Member of the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada
In office July 1832 – February 1836
Preceded by	Philippe Panet
Succeeded by	Nicolas Lefrançois
Constituency	Montmorency
1st Mayor of Quebec City
In office 1 May 1833 – 31 March 1834
Succeeded by	René-Édouard Caron
Personal details
Born	(1799-07-24)24 July 1799 Quebec City, Lower Canada
Died	11 August 1849(1849-08-11) (aged 50) Montreal, Canada East
Spouse(s)	Julie-Henriette Marett (m. May 1827)
Profession	lawyer, judge

Elzéar Bédard (24 July 1799 – 11 August 1849) was a lawyer and a member of the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada. He later became a judge.

He was born at Quebec City in 1799, the son of Pierre-Stanislas Bédard. Bédard received a typical education for the time which he completed in 1818, He then pursued a career in the priesthood but abandoned this and in 1819 articled to become a lawyer which took place in 1824. By 1830, he was involved in provincial politics and ran unsuccessfully in Kamouraska. He won a by-election in 1832 for Montmorency, a riding left vacant by Philippe Panet. He aligned himself with Louis-Joseph Papineau's Patriote party program and in 1834 was the member who introduced the Ninety-Two Resolutions, although likely he did not have a significant role in the preparation.

He was the first mayor of Quebec City, (1833–1834), but lost the next election to René-Édouard Caron. A close friend and supporter of Lord Gosford, he was appointed a judge of the Court of King's Bench in 1836, an appointment that was called bribery by his radical adversaries in the Patriote party.

Bédard was a political moderate at a time when a more extreme outlook was held by most politicians and this stance brought him some adversity and misfortune during his political life.

External links

• "Elzéar Bédard". Dictionary of Canadian Biography (online ed.). University of Toronto Press. 1979–2005. 
• "Biography". Dictionnaire des parlementaires du Québec de 1792 à nos jours (in French). National Assembly of Quebec.