Gérard Bessette, born February 25, 1920 in Sainte-Anne-de-Sabrevois, Montérégie, Quebec, and died February 21, 2005 in Kingston, Ontario, was a French-speaking Canadian novelist, poet and literary critic. Originally from Quebec, he migrated to Ontario, and although his writings are often associated with Franco-Ontarian literature, his novels are mostly set in Quebec. He grew up in Montreal, where he received his classical education at the Collège Saint-Ignace and the Externat classique Sainte-Croix. He pursued his studies at the Université de Montréal, defending a doctoral thesis in 1950 titled Les Images dans la poésie canadienne-française (Images in French-Canadian poetry). He taught for seven years at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, USA (1951–1957). He then found a position in Kingston, Ontario, first at the Royal Military College of Canada in 1958, then at the Department of French Studies at Queen's University, where he worked from 1959 to 1979.
