Joseph Édouard Cauchon

Who was Joseph Édouard Cauchon?

Joseph Édouard Cauchon, PC was a prominent Quebec politician in the middle years of the nineteenth-century. Although he held a variety of portfolios at the federal, provincial and municipal levels, he never achieved his goal of becoming the Premier of Quebec.

Born to a well-established family of seigneurs, Cauchon received a classical education at the Petit Séminaire of Quebec from 1830 to 1839, and subsequently studied law. He was called to the Quebec bar in 1843, but never practised. Instead he turned to journalism, working for Le Canadien from 1841 to 1842, and launching his own Le Journal de Québec in December of the latter year. This paper was known for its sharp political wit and generally supported Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine's French Canadian Reformers during its early years.

In 1841, he published an elementary treatise of physics entiteled Notions élémentaires de physique, avec planches à l'usage des maisons d'éducation.

Cauchon himself entered political life in 1844, winning election for the riding of Montmorency in the Province of Canada's legislature. He defeated a Mr.