The great Harvard-trained historian, Marcel Trudel, passed away on January 11 at the age of 93. He influenced a generation of Quebec historians. He strove for intellectual freedom, first scandalizing the French-Canadian religious and academic establishment in 1945 with a ground-breaking book on Voltaire. In 1960, he shocked readers when his book, Deux siècles d'esclavage au Québec, revealed the prevalence of slavery in New France. His uncompromising research earned him much criticism as he fearlessly demolished the mythic versions of New France's heroes (i.e. Dollard-des-Ormeaux).
In 2002 Véhicule Press published Memoirs of a Less Travelled Road: A Historian's Life, translated by Jane Brierley, which won the Governor General's Award for Translation. In fall 2011 the press will be publishing the first English translation of Deux siècles d'esclavage au Québec by George Tombs.
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