Yves Thériault

Of French and partial Montagnais Indigenous heritage, Thériault worked as a radio announcer, trapper, and truck driver before dedicating himself to fiction, writing over forty novels and hundreds of radio plays with torrential creative energy.

His 1958 masterpiece, Agaguk, painted an unsparing, mythic portrait of an Inuit hunter defying community taboos and harsh Arctic blizzards to defend his family. Followed by Ashini (1960) and Aaron, his works broke Quebec's inward-looking literature to embrace Indigenous and multicultural narratives.