Joseph Quesnel (15 November 1746 – 3 July 1809) was a French Canadian composer, poet, and playwright. Among his works were two operas, Colas et Colinette and Lucas et Cécile; the former is considered to be the first Canadian opera. Quesnel was born in Saint-Malo, France, where he attended the Collège Saint-Louis, in 1746. He travelled to North America on a French vessel in 1779, which was captured by the British. Quesnel was taken to Halifax, Nova Scotia and then Montreal. He married Marie-Josephte Deslandes there and became partners in business with Maurice-Régis Blondeau, his mother-in-law's new husband. He died of pleurisy at Montreal in 1809 several months after he had dived into the Saint Lawrence River to save a drowning child. Quesnel was the subject of the comic opera Le Père des amours, written by Eugene Lapierre in 1942. Quesnel's son Jules Maurice Quesnel travelled with Simon Fraser on his journey to the Pacific Ocean; the town of Quesnel, British Columbia is named for him. Another son Frédéric-Auguste became a lawyer and politician; his daughter Mélanie married lawyer Côme-Séraphin Cherrier.
