CHARLES-EUSèBE DIONNE

'Charles-Eusèbe Dionne' (20 July 1846–25 January 1925), also known as 'Charle Eusebe' or 'C. E. Dionne', was a French Canadian naturalist and taxidermist. He is considered the first professional French Canadian ornithologist. Dionne was a self-taught scientist and wrote several books on the natural history of Quebec, including the first field guide to the province's mammal fauna; he was a well-respected scholar and became a fellow of the American Ornithologists' Union.

Contents

Biography

Influence and legacy

References

Biography

Dionne was born in 1846 to a modest rural family in Saint-Denis-de-la-Bouteillerie, near Kamouraska. He was the eldest of six boys and five girls born to Eusèbe Dionne and Amélie Lavoie. His father was a cobbler and farmer but the couple attached considerable importance to education, and Charles-Eusèbe displayed a thirst for knowledge from a young age. He traveled to Quebec City in 1865 and found work at the Séminaire de Québec, where his competence was noticed and he was promoted to positions at Université Laval, then administrated by the seminary. With access to the academic library and evening classes, he acquired knowledge in English, Latin and the natural sciences. In May of 1879 he married Marie-Émélie Pelletier; they had no children.
His interests included entomology, ornithology and taxidermy. In 1882 he was appointed curator of the Zoology Museum of the university upon the death of François-Xavier Bélanger, which he helped classify, reorganise, and expand it into one of the best such collections in the province. By 1887, his entomological collections had grown to over 1,500 specimens, and in 1902, Laval granted him an honorary Master of Arts degree. Dionne was a very competent taxidermist and his collections of mammals and birds, totally over 400 specimens, were acquired in 1889 by the Musée de l'instruction Publique (now part of the Musée de la Civilisation collection).
In 1893 he became an elective fellow to the American Ornithologists' Union. His publications in the field, starting with the 1882 ''Les oiseaux du Canada'' ("The Birds of Canada"). The book, while well-received in the French community, was criticized by the English scholars. The year 1906 saw the publication of ''Les mammifères de la province de Québec'' ("the mammals of the province of Quebec"), which was a commercial success and the first comprehensive French-language books about mammals in the province. ''Les oiseaux de la province de Québec'' was his major work and came out in 1906, garnering prizes from Quebec and abroad for being up-to-date and comprehensive. It premiered French terminology in Canada for ornithology and synthesised ornithological knowledge from a variety of sources, as well as providing consistent French names for all species. Dionne was particularly interested in geographical distribution of birds, and this was reflected in the book's excellent coverage of that topic, thanks to Dionne's extensive notes and collected observations. The book would remain the only one to cover the province's avifauna so extensively for a long time. In 1910, a paper on the spiders of Quebec was published separately.
In addition to his books, Dionne published a number of papers in ''The Auk'' and the ''Naturaliste Canadien''. Despite his large knowledge and numerous contacts, he rarely traveled outside his home city, and even less frequently left the country. Dionne died of illness in Quebec City on 25 January 1925, a mere few days after Laval granted him an honorary Doctor of Science degree.

Influence and legacy

Alongside figure like Léon Provancher and Marie-Victorin, Dionne was a driving force in making natural sciences, and particularly birds, of interest in a time where such research was not considered very important. His work was widely circulated in French Canada for years after his death. In 2005, QuébecOiseaux, the main ornithological group in the province, began issuing a yearly prize named after Dionne.
Provancher named one species of ichneumon after Dionne, ''Tryphon dionnei'', now called ''Monoblastus dionnei''. Dionne's taxidermy work was appreciated and widely distributed, and his observations are important in tracing trends in bird population evolutions over time, such as those of the Passenger Pigeon. It is possible that he prepared one of the last specimens of the species.

References

★ Dionne, Charles-Eusèbe

★ Dionne, Charles-Eusèbe

★ Information requirements of users of natural science collections in Quebec, , Louise, Lepage, Canadian Heritage, 1995,

★ Notes and News, H.F.L., , , The Auk, 1925

★ Présentation de Raymond Cayouette lors de la remise du prix Charles-Eusèbe-Dionne

★ Distinctions 2005

★ La disparition de la tourte

★ La tourte… hier