Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau

Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau
Born	June 13, 1912 Montreal
Died	October 24, 1943 (aged 31) St-Catherine-de-la-Jacques-Cartier
Language	French
Nationality	Canadian
Notable works	Regards et jeux dans l'espace, Poésies complètes

Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau (June 13, 1912 – October 24, 1943) was a French Canadian poet and painter, who "was posthumously hailed as a herald of the Quebec literary renaissance of the 1950s." He has been called Quebec's "first truly modern poet."

Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau was the grandson of the poet Alfred Garneau and great-grandson of the historian Francois-Xavier Garneau. He spent his early years at his family's ancestral manor (which his mother had purchased) in Sainte-Catherine-de-Fossambault (now Sainte-Catherine-de-la-Jacques-Cartier), Quebec, where his cousin Anne Hébert was born in 1916.

Garneau moved to Montréal with his parents in 1923. There, he studied the classics at three Jesuit colleges: Sainte-Marie, Jean de Brebeuf, and Loyola.

In 1925, Garneau studied painting at Montreal's Collège des beaux-arts under Paul-Emile Borduas, Jean Palardy, Marjorie Smith and Jean-Paul Lemieux. He won a bronze medal and second prize for a work of art. In 1934 he exhibited some paintings at the Galerie des Arts in Montreal and in 1937 he presented his painting "Sky Fall" at the Museum of Fine Arts.

Still in his youth, he founded the monthly journal La relève with his friends Paul Beaulieu, , , and Jean Le Moyne.

In 1934, Garneau developed a rheumatic heart problem and discontinued his studies. He then devoted his time to writing poems, painting and music. In 1937, Regards et jeux dans l'espace, his collection of poems, was published. "Disillusioned by the volume's reception, he withdrew to the seclusion of the family manor house ... where he died in 1943, apparently of a heart attack, while canoeing alone."

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