A Life on the Line: Commander Pierre-Étienne Fortin and His Times

Terry A. Crowley is a professor of history at the University of Guelph,
and the author of Agnes Macphail and the Politics of Equality.

Pierre Йtienne Fortin (1823-1888) is one of Canada’s more colorful
and less well-known historical figures. While earlier French-language
studies have noted Fortin’s significance in Canadian history, none has
provided the depth of research and balance that this biography achieves
through contextualizing Fortin’s life.

As fisheries magistrate in Gaspé during the middle of the 19th
century, Fortin literally led his life “on the line” dividing the
lower St. Lawrence River from the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In Brian
Stewart’s capable hands the title stands figuratively for a variety of
other divisions in Canadian life: between anglophones and francophones,
foreigners and natives, aboriginal peoples and residents, fishers and
fishing companies, civil servants and bureaucrats, Conservatives and
Liberals, and humanity and nature. Fortin’s life thus becomes a rich
introduction to the social, economic, and political history of
Quebec’s maritime region.

A medical doctor by training, Fortin ministered to dying Irish
immigrants on Grosse Оle who fled Ireland’s 1847 famine. He also
defended the government when the Parliament Buildings in Montreal were
burned in 1849, enforced the law in the Gaspé region, promoted the
conservation of natural resources for future use, and was elected to the
House of Commons and to the Quebec National Assembly where he became
commissioner of crown lands.

Stewart knows how to set a scene and to tell a story, and he is equally
adept at considering the complexities that confront any reconstruction
of the past. His enjoyable, well-informed book will appeal to those
interested in a variety of historical specialties as well as to general
readers.