Fulgence Charpentier

Who was Fulgence Charpentier?

Fulgence Charpentier, OC was a French-Canadian journalist, editor and publisher.

Born in Sainte-Anne-de-Prescott, Ontario, Charpentier's career included diplomatic, political and bureaucratic positions, but his first love had been journalism ever since he began his reporting career at Montreal's Le Devoir in 1915, during which he earned $20 a week.

In 1918, Charpentier joined the Canadian army, but the war ended before he could be sent overseas. He stayed in the army after the Armistice to work in a military hospital on the campus of McGill University in Montreal.

Charpentier began covering Parliament for Ottawa's Le Droit in 1922. He got the job because his father built Le Droit's first offices. The newspaper sent him to law school in Toronto for two academic years before he began his parliamentary reporting.

Charpentier was the longest-serving member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery. His early stories on the then-unilingual English environment of Parliament were believed to be instrumental in getting federal authorities to increase the visibility of French in the Canadian public service. Over the course of his career, Charpentier also wrote for Montreal's La Presse and Quebec's Le Soleil.