As cleric, educator, and, above all, literary critic, Camille Roy championed the cause of French-Canadian survivance through the creation of a native literary tradition. Four times rector of Laval University, where he was professor of French literature and then of French-Canadian literature, Roy was widely recognized as "le grand Seigneur" of French-Canadian letters during the first half of the twentieth century.

Born on 22 October 1870 in Berthier-en-bas, Quebec, Roy was one of several children of a farming couple, Benjamin and Desanges Gosselin Roy. He was educated at the classical Seminaire de Québec and at Laval University, from which he received his doctorate in 1894. That same year he was ordained as a priest in the Roman Catholic church. (His brother Paul Eugène also entered the priesthood, eventually becoming archbishop of Quebec.) From 1898 to 1901 Roy studied classical and contemporary literary criticism at the Institut Catholique de Paris...