Olivar Asselin is remembered as one of the most forceful and articulate journalists French Canada has had. A leader, with Henri Bourassa, of the nationalist movement of the early years of the twentieth century, and an energetic defender of the French intellectual tradition in Canada, he founded three newspapers in the course of his career. But he also underwent periods during which he seemed to be at loose ends, anxiously in search of some ever-elusive principle of unity. Many of his initiatives appeared to contradict some of his most fervently held beliefs, and these inconsistencies mystified his friends and admirers.

Jean-François-Olivar Asselin was born in Saint-Hilarion, Quebec, on 8 November 1874, the son of Rieul Asselin, a tanner, and AdèleCédulie Tremblay Asselin. After six years of junior seminary in Rimouski, in summer 1892 he joined his parents in Fall River, Massachusetts, where they had immigrated...