René Chopin, along with Marcel Dugas, Paul Morin, and Guy Delahaye, is generally given a place in Quebec literary history as a "poèteartiste," preoccupied with the Parnassian ideal of form rather than with the contemporary regionalist dream of creating a "poésie du terroir" (poetry of the land). At the same time, Chopin's poetry expresses his profound affinity with the northern landscape.

Named after René de Chateaubriand (1768-1848), his mother's favorite author, René Chopin was the tenth child of Jules-Nestor Chopin, a French doctor, and Léocadie-Délia Brousseau Chopin, daughter of Antoine Brousseau, at one time the mayor of Sault-au-Recollet, Quebec, where Chopin was born on 21 April 1885. After a happy childhood in Sault-au-Recollet, on the Rivière des prairies, Chopin was sent to Montreal at the age of fourteen to study at the Collège Sainte-Marie and...