DESROSIERS, LE ´ O-PAUL (1896–1967). Le ´o-Paul Desrosiers was born
in Berthier-en-Haut, Quebec, a village on the banks of the Saint Lawrence
River northeast of Montreal. His happy childhood provided him with material for his first work, Ames et Paysages (1922), and a job as a government
news editor gave him the time he needed to write Nord-Sud (1931). Les
Engage ´s du Grand Portage (1938), generally considered his best-written
novel, tells of the ambitions and hardships of fur-trading voyageurs paddling
canoes through calm and storm on the Great Lakes* and connected waters
in the early 1800s. Vacations in his beloved Gaspe ´, a small fishing village
on the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, inspired him to use this locale as a setting
for his psychological novel L’Ampoule d’or (1951), for which he won the
Prix Duvernay. Other works include Commencements (1939), Les Opinia ˆtres
(1941), Sources (1942), Iroquoisie (1947), and the trilogy Vous Qui Passez
(1958–1960).