« remarquables », puissent être accessibles pour d'autres provinces et régions du pays.

PETER F. MCNALLY

Université McGill

(translated by Marie-Claude Rochon)

François Séguin, *D'obscurantisme et de lumières: la bibliothèque publique au Québec des origines au 21ᵉ siècle* (Montréal, QC: Hurtubise, 2016), 657 pp. $49.95 (Paperback) ISBN 9782897238803

Claude Corbo (dir.), avec la collaboration de Sophie Montreuil et d'Isabelle Crevier, *Bibliothèques québécoises remarquables* (Montréal, QC: Bibliothèques et Archives nationales du Québec, et Del Busso, 2017) 347 pp. $37.95 (Paperback) ISBN 9782924719251

Overview studies in Canadian library history are few and far between at either national or provincial levels. It is encouraging, therefore, to see two recent publications providing overviews of Quebec libraries. Although different in focus and approach, taken together these studies will provide academic and general readers alike with important insights into the province's library heritage.

Quebec enjoys Canada's oldest and most complex library tradition. The Jesuit Library (1632), in Quebec City, is the first library on the continent north of Mexico. Like other libraries of the French regime, it was part of the religious establishment and inaccessible to the general public. With the coming of the British Regime in 1763, publicly accessible libraries were introduced—at least for urban elite and middle class people. The Quebec Library (1779) and the Montreal Library (1796) were subscription libraries with bilingual—French/English—collections. From 1764 to the early twentieth century, commercial lending libraries, newsrooms, and reading rooms—usually of short duration—appeared in urban settings with books, periodicals, and newspapers available in French and English. Mechanics' Institutes began appearing in the 1820s and 30s, along with their French-language counterparts, Instituts d'artisans, in the 1850s and 60s. Depending upon their constituencies, the collections would favour English or French-language publications. In 1840/41 Alexandre Vattemare (1796-1864) visited Montreal and Quebec City, following a stay in the United States. His espousal of public libraries played a role in the emergence of Francophone Quebec's first non-religious voluntary organization,
L'Institut canadien, which soon opened Montreal's first publicly accessible library catering to the French-speaking community. The place of fiction was a source of tension in Quebec libraries as much as it was elsewhere, with readers wanting access to novels and elites attempting to discourage such access.

For the period 1763-1850, library development in Quebec roughly paralleled other parts of British North America. For the next one-hundred years or so, to the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, Quebec's libraries diverged into two separate streams: Anglophone libraries following general trends in English-speaking Canada, and Francophone libraries following a unique path notable for reading and education being largely controlled by conservative forces acting through the agency of ultramontane ideology—clerical control of social and cultural institutions. Concerning the public library movement that swept through Ontario and the western provinces, and with rather less vigour Atlantic Canada, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Quebec's involvement was largely limited to the Anglophone community. Only during the later twentieth and early twenty-first century did public libraries become generally available in Francophone Quebec. It is with this background in mind that these books—one written by François Séguin and the other edited by Claude Corbo—must be considered.

Séguin, holding Masters degrees in Librarianship and Political Science, and enjoying a thirty-two year career in Montreal public libraries, has produced the first full-scale study of Quebec's public library development. His twelve densely footnoted chapters synthesize a massive body of French and English-language primary and secondary material. Beginning in the seventeenth century and finishing in the twenty-first, his narrative documents how the process of public access to books and libraries began finding its way into Francophone society. The focus of his study is on five major themes: (i) defeat of l'Institut canadien de Montréal and other libraries attempting to develop publicly accessible collections outside the moral and theological jurisdiction of the Catholic hierarchy; (ii) acceptance of the hierarchy's moral and theological jurisdiction by l'Institut canadien de Québec, evolving over time into Quebec City's public library, Bibliothèque municipal de Montréal, and other libraries; (iii) failure of parish libraries to fulfill their role effectively, with the exception of the Sulpician Library of Montreal, transformed in the 1960s into Bibliothèque nationale du Québec, and in the 2000s into La Grande Bibliothèque du Québec, embracing both BNQ and
the Montreal Municipal Library; (iv) public libraries flourishing throughout French-speaking Quebec since 1980; and (v) the English-speaking community's pioneering role in introducing free public libraries into the province. The unsettling role of fiction in Francophone libraries is well delineated throughout. The book is illustrated and well indexed.

Corbo, formerly head of Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM), and a distinguished professor of Political Science, has edited a collection of essays on twenty-eight Quebec libraries and specialized collections. Assisting him in this project are two equally distinguished co-editors, Sophie Montreuil and Isabelle Crevier. Together they commissioned noted historians and experts to outline the history and origin of each library or collection, in addition to commenting on their “remarkable” qualities—collections, service, and cultural impact. The volume is organized into three sections: “Bibliothèques fondatrices,” seven historically important libraries no longer in existence or absorbed into other libraries; “Bibliothèques québécoises remarquables,” twenty significant public, academic, and specialized libraries; and “Annexe,” a digital collection of French language publications in the Humanities and Social Sciences—Les Classiques des sciences sociales. Indicative of the Anglophone community’s importance to Quebec’s library development, approximately one-third of the libraries explored in the collection are English, although all the essays are in French. Four essays are translations from English. There are some curious omissions such as McGill University’s McLennan-Redpath Library. None of the essays is footnoted, but each concludes with a short list of further readings. The volume is profusely illustrated, but there is no index.

Unlike Séguin, Corbo includes academic libraries and specialized libraries associated with professions and public institutions—such as Quebec’s National Assembly Library. That said, however, most of the libraries mentioned by Séquin are also covered by Corbo—including L’Institut canadien de Montréal, Bibliothèque municipal de Montréal, Westmount Public Library, and La Grand Bibliothèque. A major difference between the two volumes is that Séguin has a unified vision that permeates his entire text. By comparison, Corbo’s collection of essays by diverse authors on specific institutions reflects a variety of viewpoints and is without a governing interpretation. Another major difference is that Séguin’s work is clearly aimed at a scholarly audience, wishing detailed descriptions and explanations. Corbo’s aim is to attract a general audience, and inspire readers to visit libraries. Both
volumes are similar in including discussion of libraries developed by the province's English-speaking community, although their primary concern is with Francophone library development.

Séquin fills an important gap in our understanding of Canadian public library development. Anyone interested in Canadian, and specifically Quebec, library history needs to read this informative and well written book. His volume joins the small body of other provincial studies: Lorne Bruce's *Free Books for All: The Public Library Movement in Ontario, 1850-1930* (1994) and *Places to Grow: Public Libraries and Communities in Ontario, 1930-2000* (2010), Donald Kerr's *A Book in Every Hand: Public Libraries in Saskatchewan* (2005), *British Columbia Libraries: Historical Profiles...* (1986), and *The Library Book: a History of Service to British Columbia...* (2011). Although the major market for *D'obscurantisme et de lumières* will undoubtedly be scholarly readers, one can speculate that an even larger market might welcome an abbreviated edition that concentrates upon Séquin's major themes.

Corbo's combining of popular and academic history avoids the usual danger of falling between two stools and doing neither well. Whether or not this volume attracts a popular audience, it will certainly attract a scholarly audience. Valuable information is brought together on major and important libraries that is otherwise spread across a range of sources not always conveniently at hand. One wishes that similar volumes, discussing "remarkable" libraries and collections, were available for other provinces and regions of the country.

Armed with a bilingual dictionary, unilingual Anglophones will find these two volumes enlightening and informative!

PETER F. MCNALLY

McGill University

Tony Tremblay, ed., *New Brunswick at the Crossroads: Literary Ferment and Social Change in the East* (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2017), 215 pp. $39.99 (Paperback) ISBN 9781771122078

There is no denying the value and significance of the five primary chapters that comprise the bulk of *New Brunswick at the Crossroads: Literary Ferment and Social Change in the East*, the most recent effort to define, defend, and heighten the place and profile of New Brunswick in the story of Canadian literature. In order, these chapters are Gwendolyn Davies's "Loyalist Literature in New Brunswick, 1783-1843"; Chantal Richard's "Emergent Acadian Nationalism, 1864-