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Les institutions du savoir au Québec, 19e-20e siècle

Raphaël Pelletier and Mahdi Khelfaoui
This article introduces the Scientia Canadensis’ special issue on “Scientific Institutions in Quebec in the 19th and 20th centuries.” Through a discussion of the importance of institutions of knowledge production in Quebec, this paper provides an overview of the contributions featured in this special issue.

Acquérir et transmettre un savoir scientifique aux filles : les rôles des Ursulines de Québec (1800-1936)

Mélanie Lafrance
Between 1800 and 1936, there were three generations of science teachers at the Ursuline boarding school in Quebec City. The first instructors (1800–1844), three of whom came from the United States, used a female educational model that included the sciences. The succeeding generation of teachers (1844–1903), all natives of Quebec, deployed a series of experiments and activities aimed at making the elusive sensible. The “maîtresses de la continuité” (1903–1936), for their part, maintained a scientific education distinct from household teaching. At a time when women’s access to knowledge was restricted, these three generations of educators believed in the relevance of offering their pupils science education.

“Tel Père, Tel Fils !”: The Franciscans on Racial Degeneration, Heredity, and Eugenics (1906-1954)

Vincent Auffrey
Between 1906 and 1954, the Franciscan order was at the helm of two important social movements in Québec: the temperance and Catholic family movements. In their journals La Tempérance (1906–1937) and La Famille (1937–1954), Franciscan writers invoked the hereditary consequences of alcoholism for future generations and the looming threat of racial degeneration. This paper examines how local religious and scientific elites contributed to the growing acceptance and dissemination of eugenics in early-twentieth century Québec. It focuses on the Franciscans’ writing about heredity, degeneration, and eugenics, and especially on Hervé Blais’s 1942 publication Les tendances eugénistes au Canada.

« À la gloire et au profit du Canada français » : la création du Centre d’études nordiques de l’Université Laval, entre impératif scientifique et rhétorique politique, 1945-1961

Raphaël Pelletier
This paper sheds light on the institutionalisation of northern research in post-war French-speaking Quebec, focusing on the intellectual, disciplinary and political negotiations around the creation of Université Laval’s Centre d’études nordiques (CEN) in 1961. The debates underlying CEN’s institutional vision, as imagined by geographer Louis-Edmond Hamelin (1923–2020), reveal the tensions among politicians and academics whose interests diverged in terms of ends, but converged in terms of means. The research centre, seen as vehicle ensuring a French-Canadian presence in the Quebec’s north, offers insight into the political and scientific premises of Quebec’s Quiet Revolution.

Entre identité disciplinaire et contrôle institutionnel : les pratiques éditoriales à la « Revue canadienne de biologie » de l’Université de Montréal (1942-1983)

Pierre-Luc Beauchamp
During the 1930s, French-speaking scientists in Quebec published little research in the natural sciences. To remedy this situation, in 1942, professors from the University of Montreal launched the “Revue canadienne de biologie.” By reconstructing the trajectory of this periodical, we relate the implementation of editorial practices intended to conform with the requirements of the scientific field. We then analyze the process of disciplinary positioning of the periodical, as well as the tensions specific to the emergence of editorial power that largely benefited medical biology rather than other branches of biology. Finally, we examine the impact of the management of the journal by Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal on the editorial process, particularly on peer-review practices.

La Clinique Roy-Rousseau et l’École La Jemmerais, piliers du développement de l’hygiène mentale au Québec

Alexandre Klein
The history of mental health in Quebec has often been reduced to the activities of national, provincial and local committees dedicated to its development, or to the initiatives of a few committed individuals. However, behind these highly visible standard-bearers lie institutions that served as pillars for the development of this movement. Such is the case of the Roy-Rousseau Clinic and the La Jemmerais School, founded in 1926 and 1928, respectively, within the Saint-Michel-Archange Hospital in Beauport. Promoting a social neuropsychiatry that was open to and connected with the community, these two institutions, designed to be complementary and to break with traditional methods of internment, helped to establish and develop mental hygiene in the Quebec City region and beyond. This article looks back at the transnational history of this first adult neuropsychiatry service and the first school for “educable abnormal” children in the province, and their role in the emergence of the mental hygiene movement in Quebec.

L’écologie scientifique et l’administration de la gestion faunique au Québec, 1961-1994

Stéphane Castonguay and Pascal Di Francesco
This article examines how wildlife researchers in Quebec made scientific ecology the cornerstone of wildlife management in the second half of the twentieth century. The article pays attention to the transformations within the ministry responsible for hunting and fishing activities, which allowed researchers from within their institutional niche to define a scientific programme focused on acquiring knowledge about wildlife habitats. We also examine changes to the legal framework for wildlife protection centred on habitat conservation to see how this concept has informed the design of management programs for species prized by hunters.

« Une bonne production fourragère est essentielle au succès de la ferme » : propos d’agronomes sur le foin, les prairies et la fenaison au Québec, 1800-1950

Jocelyn Morneau
Although there were many people in the province of Québec who were knowledgeable in the agricultural domain and well-versed in its innovative processes at the beginning of the 19th century, the science of agronomy came into its own more than a century later, many decades after its emergence in Europe. The first agronomy graduates and their predecessors in Québec explored a variety of topics in agricultural development and markets in the province. As livestock husbandry became predominant in the production system in the second half of the century, agronomists focused on forage and the advantages and disadvantages of various native herbaceous plants, including which clover, alfalfa and common timothy. They considered how to transform sown areas into fertile grasslands for haymaking and the diverse ways of growing high-quality forage to improve farm livestock breeding.

Gérard Fabre. Le pari canadien d’André Siegfried. Presses de l’Université Laval, 2021

Guy Mercier

Kristin A. Wintersteen. The Fishmeal Revolution: The Industrialization of the Humboldt Current Ecosystem. Oakland: The University of California Press, 2021

William Knight

Marc Ménard et André Mondoux (dir.). Intelligence artificielle et société : machinisme, symbolisme et politique. Presses de l’Université du Québec. 2024

Florence Lussier-Lejeune

Matthew S. Wiseman. Frontier Science: Northern Canada, Military Research, and the Cold War, 1945-1970. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2024

Elizabeth Spence

Cardoni, F., Couchon, A., Margairaz, M. et B. Touchelay (dir.) Chiffres privés, chiffres publics, XVIIe-XXIe siècle : entre hybridations et conflits, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2022, 269 pp.

Jean-Guy Prévost

Mélanie Lafrance, Femmes de sciences. Les Ursulines de Québec et leurs élèves, 1800-1936, 214 p. Québec : Les éditions du Septentrion, 2025. IBSN 9782897916091

Louise Bienvenue

Errata: Biography of an Artifact: The Theratron Junior and Canada’s Atomic Age

David Pantalony