Guy Sylvestre

Who was Guy Sylvestre?

Guy Sylvestre, OC, FRSC was a Canadian literary critic, librarian and civil servant.

Born in Sorel, Quebec, he attended College Ste-Marie, Montreal, and received his B.A. in 1939 and MA in 1942 from the University of Ottawa where he began his literary career as writer and critic.

By his early twenties, he was already the author of several articles in journals and newspapers, literary critic for the Ottawa newspaper Le Droit 1939–48, and founder of his own journal. Publication of Anthologie de la poésie canadienne d’expression française established him as an intellectual and a specialist in Canadian poetry. He was a founding member of the Académie canadienne-française in 1944 and President of the Royal Society of Canada 1973–74.

Sylvestre served as a translator in the Senate of Canada 1942–1944 and at the World War II Wartime Information Board in 1944–45. He was subsequently private secretary to the Rt. Hon. Louis St. Laurent, Prime Minister of Canada, between 1945 and 1950, a position which led to important civil service jobs.

In 1956 to 1968, he was Associate Director of the Library of Parliament and then became the second National Librarian at what is now Library and Archives Canada from 1968 to 1983. The library experienced extraordinary growth under his leadership, housed in a new building on Wellington Street. The collection grew rapidly and the national bibliography Canadiana was automated.