Jean was a Franco-Ontarian, born in Sturgeon Falls in 1925. As was expected of a young man of his background, he was educated at the Jesuit College in Sudbury and afterwards at the Université de Montréal where he obtained his Licence ès Lettres. His obvious promise in literary studies led him to the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, and to the degree of Diplome d'Études Supérieures. He was afterwards the Adenauer Scholar at the University of Munich and completed his formal university training when he was awarded his doctorate at Laval.
Entre 1953 et 1958, il fut au service diplomatique du Canada: tour à tour secrétaire d'ambassade à Paris, chargé de Mission à Poznan, représentant permanent du Canada à Hanoi, il revint au Ministère à Ottawa, attaché a la Direction des Affaires d'Asie, puis aux Affaires d'Europe.
Quittant la carrière diplomatique, il devint professeur de littérature à l'Université Carleton en 1960, puis en 1962 à l'Ecole des Hautes Études commerciales à Montréal. Il fut enfin invité à venir à l'Université McGill en 1963, au Département de langue et littérature françaises dont il fut brièvement directeur.
En 1990, il prenait sa retraite et l'Université allait lui décerner le titre de professeur émérite. A l'occasion de la remise des diplômes en juin 1991, il fut invité à prononcer le discours d'honneur dont j'extrais ces quelques lignes.
I have been teaching at McGill for nearly 30 years and today, together with my colleagues, I am honoured with a diploma, which goes to prove that professors mature more slowly than students. It is a well-established belief that professors teach. They do.
But what do they teach, what remains of their teaching? In the end, when diplomas have been earned, jobs obtained, and one starts to recollect the past, a teacher is remembered not so much for the mysteries of learning he has unveiled as for what he was. He has imparted himself, and the more idiosyncratic the man, the better.
We are all being subjected in dreary fashion to the pressures of intellectual conformity. Universities are perhaps, with Patagonia, the last remaining ground where originality of mind and behaviour can flourish.
On peut affirmer aujourd'hui que quelques générations d'étudiants ont suivi passionément ses cours, et l'on entend tous les jours des témoignages d'admiration et de gratitude à son égard: il restera pour nombre de ses anciens élèves un professeur à la pensée forte, personnelle, marquante. Durant toutes ces années il a dirigé quantité de mémoires et de thèses, tant dans le domaine français que québécois. Il demeurera l'une des figures les plus éminentes dans l'histoire du Département de langue et littérature françaises et de cette Université.
For almost 30 years he was a literary critic at Le Devoir. His weekly Carnets, or notebooks, were read closely by a wide and attentive public. They are models of style, whether or not one agrees with their content! For Jean Éthier-Blais was at one and the same time a supremely diligent observer, but also a strict and demanding one. He placed the formal order of literary work above all other considerations. He published seven novels and collections of short stories. Indeed, his last novel was within a few pages of completion at the time of his death.
However, it is as an essayist and literary critic that he is best known. A dozen volumes of critical observations attest to his stature as a humanist, in the widest sense. Jean Éthier-Blais wrote with accuracy but without indulgence. His subjects were literature, his chief passion, but also music, aesthetics, history-both history of the past and in the making. His keen gaze was turned upon his fellow human beings, upon their interaction with the events and objects of our turbulent world. His vision was of a startling clarity and his commentaries had that audacity and asperity which we cannot but admire, with a smile of complicity and a touch of envy.
Président du Centre québécois du PEN international de 1987 à 1994, il était aussi depuis quelques années président de la Fondation Lionel-Groulx.
Pour son oeuvre et ses mérites, il avait obtenu le Prix Duvernay, le Prix Athanase-David, le Prix France-Québec, le Prix France-Canada. Il était membre de l'Ordre des francophones d'Amérique, et Officier de l'Ordre national du Québec. L'Université Laurentienne lui avait décerné un doctorat Honoris Causa, et il était membre de l'Académie des Lettres du Québec.
Dans l'un de ses essais, publié d'abord en 1976, on trouve cette phrase: Il me semble que, même après ma mort, un je-ne-sais-quoi restera de moi, sous forme d'attachement ou de livre.
Sa famille, ses collègues et ses amis se souviendront de lui avec émotion et retrouveront dans ses livres, à son écriture, sa voix unique et attachante.
Jean-Pierre Duquette
Chair, Department of French Language and Literature