Léon Abel Provancher (born 10 March 1820, in the parish of
Bécancour, Nicolet County,
Quebec
Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...
; d. at
Cap-Rouge, Quebec, 23 March 1892) was a Canadian Catholic
parish priest
A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or ...
and naturalist. He is called the "Father of Natural History in Canada".
Life
Provancher studied at the college and seminary of Nicolet, and was ordained 12 September 1844. He organized two pilgrimages to Jerusalem, one of which he conducted in person. In 1865 he established in his parish at
Portneuf a confraternity of the
Third Order of St. Francis.
Phillips, Edward. "Léon Abel Provancher." The Catholic Encyclopedia
Vol. 12. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911. 15 June 2016 He promoted the Third Order in his writings. For two years he edited a review, in which he published nearly every month an article on the Third Order, or answered questions appertaining thereto.
From childhood he had a special love for the study of nature and whatever time he could spare from his pastoral duties was devoted to the study and description of the fauna and flora of Canada. Provancher specialized in botany and entomology. He started in the art of grafting and began collecting shellfish. The Léon-Provancher collection of specimens and writings constitute the most complete and best preserved collections of North American naturalists of the nineteenth century.
Works
In 1868 he founded the , a monthly publication which he edited for twenty years, and from 1869 until his death he was engaged almost exclusively in scientific work.
Among his chief writings are:
* (Quebec, 1858)
* (2 vols., Quebec, 1862)
* (Quebec, 1862)
* (Quebec, 1874)
* (3 vols., 1877–90)
* (1884)
* (1890)
*
See also
*List of Roman Catholic scientist-clerics
A list is a set of discrete items of information collected and set forth in some format for utility, entertainment, or other purposes. A list may be memorialized in any number of ways, including existing only in the mind of the list-maker, but ...
* :Taxa named by Léon Abel Provancher
References
*Laflamme, Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada for 1892, Presidential Address (Ottawa, 1893)
*Huard, L'Abbé Provancher in Le Naturaliste Canadien, XXI-XXVI, XXX (Chicoutimi, 1894–9; Quebec, 1903).
External links
*
the ''Catholic Encyclopedia''
Biography at the ''Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Provancher, Leon
1820 births
1892 deaths
Canadian naturalists
19th-century Canadian botanists
Canadian entomologists
19th-century Canadian Roman Catholic priests
Catholic clergy scientists
People from Centre-du-Québec
Canadian academic journal editors
Persons of National Historic Significance (Canada)