A poet and a novelist, Louis Dantin is, however, remembered mainly as a critic and a keen observer of the Quebec literary scene during the first half of the twentieth century. The son of Henriette-Eloise Perrin and Louis-Alexandre-Napoléon Seers, a lawyer, Dantin was born Ferdinand-Joseph-Eugène Seers on 28 November 1865 in Beauharnois, Quebec, and was educated in Montreal at the Collège de Montréal and the Séminaire de Philosophie (1874-1882).

On his passage to France, where he was to complete his education at the Seminary of Issy-les-Moulineaux, Dantin decided to enter religious orders and in July 1883 began his novitiate with the Pères du Très-Saint-Sacrement in Brussels, taking his vows on 29 September 1884. In October 1884 he was sent to the Gregorian University in Rome, where in 1887 he earned his doctorate in philosophy. In December 1887 he became secretary to the...