Félix Leclerc was born to Leo and Fabiola Parrot Leclerc at La Tuque, a small rural Quebec community, on the eve of World War I, 2 August 1914. The sixth of eleven children, he attributes his musical gift and love of life to his mother's influence and to the atmosphere she created at home where, he recalls, the members of the family sang more than they spoke. His childhood life is lovingly recreated in his autobiographical works and in the numerous interviews he has given.

He left home at the age of fourteen to study in Ottawa and it was at the University of Ottawa, at the age of eighteen, that he first began to compose songs. Those songs were the seeds of what later became the short stories, poetry, novels, and plays of one of Quebec's most widely read and acclaimed literary craftsmen. Because of the depression...