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Provancher, L"Abbe Léon (1820-1892)
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
PROVANCHER, LÉON, Roman Catholic priest, naturalist, author, publisher, and editor; b. 10 March 1820 in Bécancour, Lower Canada, the son of Joseph-Étienne Provancher and Geneviève Hébert; d. 23 March 1892 in Cap-Rouge, Que. Léon Provancher’s predilection for the natural sciences developed in his childhood. As a boy he was greatly impressed by a shellfish fossil discovered by workmen digging a well. This seemingly trivial event aroused his curiosity and his interest in nature. When still very young he learned the names of a great many plants and trees. In 1834 the award of a bursary enabled him to enrol in the Séminaire de Nicolet, where almost every year he won the prize for horticulture. He finished the two-year philosophy program at the age of 20 and began studying theology. At the same time he taught syntax, method, belles-lettres, and rhetoric. He was ordained to the priesthood at Quebec on 12 Sept. 1844, along with Jean Langevin, Antoine Racine, and two others. Provancher was appointed curate first in his native village, and then in the parishes of Saint-Roch at Quebec, Saint-François (in Beauceville), Sainte-Marie, Saint-Gervais, and Saint-Henri-de-Lauzon (Saint-Henri). In 1847 he went to carry out his ministry on Grosse Île, among the unfortunate Irish decimated by typhus. The following year he became parish priest of Saint-Victor in the Beauce region. He now resumed his work in horticulture and tried to learn how to graft trees and shrubs. Appointed curé of Saint-Jean-Baptiste on L’Isle-Verte in 1852, he became interested in the flora and fauna found along the St Lawrence, especially the shellfish. In September 1854 Provancher became parish priest of Saint-Joachim, where he showed his initiative by reconstructing the outbuildings owned by the fabrique, repairing the presbytery, enlarging the church and installing a heating system, erecting the steeple, procuring new vestments, and arranging to have the parish buildings insured. In his search for new sources of revenue, he decided to put the pews up for sale on an annual basis, including that of the seigneur which belonged to the Séminaire de Québec. The seminary brought suit against him and he was forced to respect seigneurial rights. Provancher did not give up the natural sciences. In 1857, under the pseudonym of Émilien Dupont, he published Essai sur les insectes et les maladies qui affectent le blé. This text had been entered in a contest sponsored by the government in 1856 to solve the problems that had plagued grain farming in the province ever since the arrival of the Hessian fly in the 1830s. Provancher won third prize. In 1858 he published Traité élémentaire de botanique . . . ; the first work of its kind in Canada, it was used in educational institutions for many years, until the publication of Louis-Ovide Brunet*’s Éléments de botanique et de physiologie végétale . . . (Quebec, 1870) and Jean Moyen’s Cours élémentaire de botanique et Flore du Canada . . . (Montreal, 1871). In 1861 Provancher met Brunet, who was then a professor of botany at Université Laval, and collected plants with him in various regions of Lower and Upper Canada. Fascinated by the many insect parasites on plants in his garden, Provancher began to study entomology under William Couper*. He asked Spencer Fullerton Baird, of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, to let him know what American works might be most useful to him in this field of science. He also requested New York entomologist William Henry Edwards to send him entomological pins.
PUBLICATIONS
- Provancher, L. 1885-1889. Additions et corrections au Volume II de la Faune entomologique du Canada, traitant des Hyménoptères. Québec: C. Darveau, 477 pp.
REFERENCE
- Hutchinson, R. 2001. Nouv' Ailes 11(3): 2, portrait.