Book ID: 95508
Bouchard, André
Marie - Victorin à Cuba. Correspondance avec le Frère Léon. 2008. 216 p.- In French.
Marie-Victorin (1885-1944) is Quebec’s best-known scientist. His fame rests primarily on the Montreal Botanical Garden, which he founded in 1931, and on his celebrated *Flore laurentienne* (1935). From 1938 onwards, he made seven trips to Cuba; these visits enabled him to make contact with a certain Brother Léon, a Frenchman who had emigrated to Cuba and was the author of the *Flora*, which dominated the botanical history of the Pearl of the Antilles for decades. Marie-Victorin and Brother Léon maintained a regular correspondence from 1907 to 1944, which enables us to understand their respective journeys. This correspondence, often peppered with humour, reveals many facets of Marie-Victorin’s time in Cuba: a man in poor health, who detested the Canadian winter, took refuge in a hotel in Havana and longed to live differently for two or three months a year, far from his Botanical Garden and the demands of his community. One can sense the fervour of both botanists and their shared camaraderie as scientists who had taken holy orders.