User:Liberlogos/Olivar Asselin
Olivar Asselin (November 8, 1874–April 18, 1937) was a Quebec writer and journalist. He was a prominent nationalist, pamphleteer and polemist.
Biography[edit]
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 firts brief military participation from 1898 to 1899. Demobilized in 1899, he moved to Montreal and collaborated to various papers, including Les Débats. 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. On August 3, 1902, he married Alice Le Bouthilli. From 1902 to 1910, he worked closely with Henri Bourassa and contributed with him to the foundation of le Devoir in 1910.
A nationalist militant, he set up the Ligue nationaliste canadienne in March 1903 and launched the newspaper Le Nationaliste a year later. In 1905, he began a campaign in favour of public compulsory education. During World War I, in 1915, he enroled himself in the Canadian Expeditionary Force and recruited volunteers to form the 163rd Battalion. He was decorated of 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.