George-Paschal Desbarats
| George-Paschal Desbarats | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
11 August 1808 Quebec City, Lower Canada |
| Died | 12 November 1864 (aged 56) Montreal, Province of Canada |
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George-Paschal Desbarats (11 August 1808 – 12 November 1864) was a French-Canadian printer, publisher, businessman, and landowner. From 1841 he co-held an exclusive contract as the Queen's printer.
George-Paschal Desbarats was born in Quebec City in Lower Canada on 11 August 1808, the third son of Marie-Josephte (née Voyer) and Pierre-Édouard Desbarats, a printer and Deputy Registrar of the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada.
Desbarats attended the school of the Presbyterian clergyman Daniel Wilkie and later apprenticed with a shopkeeper named James George and then a timber merchant in the Basse-Ville of Quebec City. He managed the family business from 1826 when he father fell ill and took it over when his father died two years later. He continued the business's relations with its co-owner Thomas Cary, and they may have co-owned Cary's Quebec Mercury newspaper from 1828 to 1848. The relationship appears to have been uneasy.
With Cary, Desbarats had a contract as printer to the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada as of 1841. In September 1841 Desbarats and Stewart Derbishire received an appointment as "Her Majesty’s Printer and Law Printer in and for the Province of Canada"; as the Queen's printers they had an exclusive contract to print and distribute government publications in the Province of Canada, a contract Desbarats maintained throughout his life. He thus moved as the capital did throughout the period to Kingston, Montreal, Toronto, and Quebec City, where in 1860 he and Derbershire established a business with the help of his son George-Édouard Desbarats and were responsible for the publication of works by such French-Canadian writers as Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé and Ernest Gagnon as well as the literary journal Le Foyer canadien. Amongst his commissions were the reprinting of Samuel de Champlain's works, completed after his death by George-Édouard in 1870.
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