The Fabulous History of Science in Quebec | Quebec through its science

Becoming “masters at home” in the field of science was a necessary step for Brother Marie-Victorin, author of the Laurentian flora. Series The fabulous history of science in Quebec offers an overview of 100 years of scientific research in Quebec and recalls in particular the story of a secret nuclear research laboratory in the 1940s at the University of Montreal.

Alexandre Vigneault
The Press

100 years ago, French Canadians were absent from scientific fields. Few of them took their studies beyond the basic teaching offered at the time. Nonsense for Brother Marie-Victorin, a self-taught botanist recognized for his leadership qualities. From his point of view, it was necessary to “develop the nation through science”.

He joined words with actions and contributed to the establishment of the French-Canadian Association for the Advancement of Science, known today as Acfas. Series The fabulous history of science in Quebecmade up of 10 short documentaries of about 15 minutes, also highlights the upcoming 100th anniversary of this association founded in 1923.

The aim of the series, divided into decades, is to offer a broad panorama of the research and discoveries made here and to evoke the development of institutions.

One episode, the one dedicated to the 1990s, is dedicated to the Cité d’archéologie et d’histoire de Montréal at Pointe-à-Callière, made possible thanks to the collaboration of teams from diverse backgrounds: archaeologists, historians , architects, museologists, etc.

One of the recurring themes of the series is the transmission of knowledge, dear to Brother Marie-Victorin, but also to several other outstanding scientific figures such as microbiologist Armand Frappier, ecologist Pierre Dansereau and biochemist Fernand Seguin, who marked television with its popularization program The salt of the week from 1965 to 1970.

Atomic bomb

One of the most intriguing episodes concerns the existence of a secret nuclear laboratory associated with the Manhattan Project, which developed the first atomic bomb during the 1940s, at the University of Montreal. The place was not chosen at random: the Côte-des-Neiges district is already multi-ethnic and suggests that the presence of foreign researchers (they came from around forty countries) would go unnoticed there.

The laboratory, with which physicist Pierre Demers was associated, did not produce the bomb, even though it was the objective of the British Tube Alloys project which was the source of the research carried out in Montreal. The work carried out focused in particular on a method for separating plutonium and uranium.

The following episode, devoted to the 1950s, focuses on the botanist Pierre Dansereau, who was one of the fathers of ecology and who looked into the role of human beings in the dynamics of natural ecosystems. A world leader, he is the only Quebecer whose name appears in theEncyclopaedia Britannica and the author of Biogeography: An Ecological Perspective (1957), an important work which remains a reference today.

The fabulous history of science in Quebec is not a feast on the visual level: it presents interesting visual archives, but it is based above all on interviews with specialists, including the historian and sociologist of science Yves Gingras.

However, the series produced by Michel Barbeau does honor to Acfas’ transmission mission: the documentaries take care to present information in a stimulating and clear manner. His way of forging links with the evolution of society anchors this historical panorama in a broader perspective.

The fabulous history of science in Quebec will be presented on Savoir media from September 14th. It will also be offered on the Savoir media website.