Jacques Ferron
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Jacques Ferron (January 21, 1921 - April 22, 1985) was a Canadian physician and author.
Jacques Ferron was born in Louiseville, Québec, the son of Joseph-Alphonse Ferron and Adrienne Caron. On March 5, 1931, his mother passed away. He attended Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf but was expelled in 1936. He continued his education at Collège Saint-Laurent and then was readmitted at Jean-de-Brébeuf, only to be expelled again. In September 1941, he was accepted at Université de Laval where he studied medicine, and on July 22, 1943, he married a fellow student, Magdeleine Thérien whom he divorced in 1949. In 1945, he joined the Canadian army as a medic. He trained in British-Columbia and Ontario and after that was sent to Québec and New-Brunswick as a medic. When relieved of duty in 1946, he settled in Rivière-Madeleine. In 1947, his father died. In 1948, he returned to Montréal. In 1949, he moved to Longueuil, and his first book, L'ogre, was published. In 1951, he began a 30-year collaboration with "L'Information médicale et paramédicale". On June 28, 1952, he married Madeleine Lavalée. In 1954 he became an important member of the "Congrès Canadien pour la Paix"(Canadian Peace Congress). In 1959 he helped in the foundation of the magazine Situations. In 1960, with the help of Raoul Roy, he created "L'Action socialiste pour l'indépendance du Québec". In 1962, he received the Governor General's prize of Canada for his book "Contes du pays incertain".
In 1963 he founded the Parti Rhinocéros, which he described as "an intellectual guerrilla party". He also began to write for the magazine "Parti pris". In 1966, for 1 year, he was a doctor at the Mont-Providence psychiatric ward(now Rivière-des-Prairies hospital). In September he was the official representative for "L'Information médicale et paramédicale" at a congress of National Conference on Mental Retardation held in Moncton, NB. 1969, he becomes a member of the Parti québécois. 1970, he work at the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu psychiatric ward(now Louis-H. La Fontaine hospital) for 1 year. 1972, May 10th, he receives the France-Québec prize for his book: Les roses sauvages, November 23rd, he is given the Duvernay prize by the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal. In 1973, he travelled to Warsaw to assist a congres, L'Union mondiale des écrivains médecins. 1977, the Québec government gives him the Athanase-David prize. 1981, he was nammed honorable member of the Union des écrivains québécois. He died in 1985 in his home in Saint-Lambert, he was 64. He is believed to have shot himself when he realised that Québec would never become a sovereign country.