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Date of birth: Place of birth:
Callings:
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Photo : Archives des Frères des Écoles chrétiennes
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Conrad Kirouac was the son of
Philomène Luneau and Cyrille Kirouac. His
father was a prosperous merchant in Quebec City.
Conrad's primary schooling was in the Saint-Sauveur
neighbourhood of Quebec City and he entered the
Académie commerciale de Québec to
comply with his father's wishes. After brilliant
studies,he decided, much to his father's dismay, to
join the Christian Brothers of Mont-Lasalle de
Maisonneuve where he took the name of Brother
Marie-Victorin. He was gifted for teaching and
planned to teach. His superiors in the community
made him take a number of rests in the countryside
because of the precarious state of his health and
there he discovered a passion for nature.
In 1904, he taught French
Composition, Algebra, Geometry and Botany at the
Collège de Longueil. He spent his free time
studying the Laurentian flora, a subject he dealt
with in his first writings. He made scientific
contacts abroad that brought him out of his
isolation. He was invited to teach Botany at the
Fondation de la faculté des sciences of the
Université de Montréal in 1920. For a
number of years, he shared his working hours
between the Collège de Longueuil and the
Université de Montréal. He was torn
between his desire to continue teaching young
people and moving forward with his scientific
career; in 1923 he co-founded and became the first
Secretary of the Association canadienne
française pour l'avancement des sciences
(ACFAS). Subsequently, he set up the
Société canadienne d'histoire
naturelle. With the fouonding of the Institut de
botanique, he began to make an inventory of Quebec
flora. This colossal work led to the publication of
his masterwork in 1935, La flore laurentienne. This
literary and scientific work is used in
universities as a reference tool. His work brought
him the recognition of numerous institutions, both
in Canada and abroad. He attended numerous
scientific congresses abroad. In 1929, he
campaigned for a botanical garden in Montreal. In
1936, his hopes for the Montreal Botanical Garden
were realized. He went on to found the Cercle des
jeunes naturalistes, which allowed thousands of
young Quebeckers to be introduced to the natural
sciences. He also participated in reorganizing the
teaching of geology in Quebec, througoh the
creation of a geological institute.
Brother Marie-Victorin was
responsible for a renewal of scientific culture in
Quebec and, thanks to him, its scientific movement
has been recognized abroad. At the height of his
powers, on the threshold of his sixtieth year, he
died on July 15,1944, from a car accident. He was
coming back from a plant collecting trip where he
had just discovered and collected a new variety of
heather. A number of plants in Quebec, Spain and
Cuba have been named after him.
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