Marcel Trudel, Canadian historian and author, died from cancer he was , 93.

Marcel Trudel, CC, GOQ was a Canadian historian, university professor (1947-1982) and author who published more than 40 books on the history of New France, scientifically re-written. Trudel's work has been honored with major awards.

(May 29, 1917 – January 11, 2011)

 Early life and education

Marcel Trudel was born in Saint-Narcisse-de-Champlain, northeast of Trois-Rivières, Quebec, the son of Hermyle Trudel and Antoinette Cossette. He earned a B.A. in 1941 and a Doctorate in 1945 from Université Laval.

Career

In 1945, Trudel began postdoctoral studies for two years at Harvard University and then returned to Université Laval to become a professor of history at the newly-founded Institute of History there. He went on to become head of the history department. He published (between 1955 and 1960), neutrally, on many subjects to be scandalous under the eyes of the Catholic hierarchy controlling the university, as: "Chiniquy" (the first French Catholic priest who became a Presbyterian minister), "The Canadian Catholic Chuch under the English Military Government, in 1759-1764", and "The Slaves in New France" (most of them being Amerindian and belonging even to the Catholic Church masters). Trudel was also, from 1962, the president of the For Laïcité Movement in Quebec City. It was too much: under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy, in 1962 Laval University demoted him from his position as head of the History department.
In 1961, Laval University Press joined with the University of Toronto Press in establishing the Dictionary of Canadian Biography (DCB). Trudel served as the Associate General Editor from 1961 to 1965, working with the General Editor, George Williams Brown, a historian at the University of Toronto. They collaborated both in organizing the over-all project, which has published 15 volumes and is on-going, and in editing the first volume, which covered the period from 1000-1700 and was published in 1966. The DCB is published simultaneously in English and French and has been widely recognized as one of the most important scholarly undertakings in Canada.
In 1965 Trudel left Laval University and Quebec City, to live near Ottawa and work, instead, at the Carleton University.The next year, yet, he began teaching at the University of Ottawa, after the Ontario government took over the university from the Catholic Oblate Fathers. He had to retire sixteen years later, in 1982 (as everyone at the age of 65, at that time), but during the next 28 years he wrote and published half of his books, as "retired" near Montreal, from 1983 to his last living year, and (from 1993) he also was a part time lecturer at the university, to some old people groups.
Trudel's life's work has been the history of New France, in particular his monumental and authoritative Histoire de la Nouvelle-France (five volumes published on ten anticipated) from 1963 to 1999. Trudel has meticulously reviewed the primary sources. He implicitly criticized previous accounts in his effort to tell the colony's story without, what he views as, pious or nationalist bias.
Marcel Trudel died, at the age of 93, on January 11, 2011, of generalized cancer.^[2] He left his 3 children, plus six grandchildren (one of them, Jean-Philippe Rheault, being his webmaster), and six great-grandchildren.

Selected works (in English)

• 1954: The Jumonville Affair, published in 1953, Pennsylvania History Quarterly Journal, vol. 21, no. 4, 34 pages.^[3]
• 1956: The Seigneurial Regime, a brochure published by the Canadian Historical Society.
• 1967: Canada: Unity and Diversity (with P.G. Cornell, J. Hamelin, F. Ouellet), Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Toronto, 530 pages.
• 1968: Introduction to New France, Holt, Rinehart and Winston of Canada, 300 pages (From his first books of « Histoire de la Nouvelle-France »: Le comptoir, 1604-1627, winner of the 1966 Governor General's Awards, etc.)
• 1970: Canadian History Textbooks - A Comparative Study (with Genevieve Jain), within Studies of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, Queen's Printer for Canada, 150 pages.
• 1973: The Beginnings of New France 1524-1663. Translation by Patricia Claxton. McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, 324 pages, ISBN 0771086105.
• 2002: Memoirs of a Less Traveled Road: A Historian's Life, translation of his autobiography (Mémoire d'un autre siècle, winner of the 1987 Governor General's Awards) by Jane Brierley, winner of the 2003 Governor General's Awards, Véhicule Press, 248 p., ISBN

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