13 Facts About Gaston Miron

Gaston Miron was born in Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts, in the Laurentian Mountains region, 100 kilometers north of Montreal.

Gaston Miron's father, Charles-August Miron, was a successful carpenter-entrepreneur, and his death in 1940 was the decisive event of his son's childhood.

At Sacred Heart, young Gaston Miron's plan was to pursue a career in education as a teaching brother.

Gaston Miron worked for a time as an organizer and leader of the Catholic youth organization, l'Order du bon temps.

In 1953, with Olivier Marchand, Gaston Miron published his first collection of poems, Deux Sangs at Editions de l'Hexagone, an artisanal publishing company founded by the authors and four of their friends.

Hexagone was the first publisher in French Canada dedicated to poetry: Gaston Miron would become the central force behind its contribution to Quebecois culture over the next thirty years.

Gaston Miron quickly signed young and innovative poets like Jean-Guy Pilon and Fernand Ouellette, thus prolonging the efforts of the modernists of the immediately preceding generation like Alain Grandbois, Paul-Marie Lapointe and Roland Giguere, who had released their first books before the Hexagone's founding and would later join its roster of authors.

From 1953 until the end of the decade, Gaston Miron worked at the Beauchemin Bookstore and other book related jobs in Montreal.

On 10 June 1957 and 31 March 1958, Gaston Miron was a candidate in Canadian federal elections in the Outremont riding of Montreal for the socialist Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation.

Between 1959 and 1961, Gaston Miron lived in Paris, ostensibly to study bookmaking, but he took the opportunity to form contacts with many poets and other writers on the French literary scene.

Gaston Miron published some of them in the new literary journals of the Quiet Revolution like Liberte and the short-lived but important Parti Pris.

In December 1996 Gaston Miron died in Montreal and became the first Quebecois author to receive a state funeral.

The City of Montreal honoured the memory of Gaston Miron by giving his name to the building that currently hosts the city's arts council offices.