Discrete Item F408 - The Worship of Canadian history

Gustave Lanctot is a historian, archivist, journalist, and soldier born at Sain-Constant, Quebec. He was educated at the College de Montreal and the Universite de Montreal. In 1907, he was called to the bar, and Lanctot soon abandoned law for journalism and worked for Le Canada and La Patrie before being awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University. In 1912, Lanctot found work as at the Public Archives of Canada. He was later the director of the Public Archive’s French Section and taught at the University of Ottawa. In 1937, Lanctot was appointed the deputy minister and Dominion Archivist. He remained in that position until 1948. He was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 1926, and was also the president of the Canadian Historical Association in 1941. Lanctot was awarded a number of distinctions over the course of his career, including the French Legion d’honneur and the Royal Society of Canada’s J.B. Tyrrell Medal for outstanding work in the history of Canada