Article

Charles-Eusèbe Dionne

Published Online April 13, 2008

Last Edited December 5, 2013

Charles-Eusèbe Dionne, ornithologist (b at St-Denis de Kamouraska, Qué 11 July 1845; d at Québec City 25 Jan 1925). The model of the self-taught man, Dionne was one of the most respected naturalists of French Canada.

Dionne, Charles-Eusèbe

Charles-Eusèbe Dionne, ornithologist (b at St-Denis de Kamouraska, Qué 11 July 1845; d at Québec City 25 Jan 1925). The model of the self-taught man, Dionne was one of the most respected naturalists of French Canada. At 16, he became a servant at the Séminaire de Québec, where he distinguished himself by his intelligence and thirst for knowledge. Having been successively a laboratory assistant in the Faculty of Medicine at Université de Laval and an assistant librarian, in 1882 he became curator of the zoology museum there. Under his direction, the museum rapidly became one of the richest and best organized in Québec. Dionne was a master taxidermist and the college's major source of natural-history specimens. In correspondence with ornithologists around the world and as member of the American Ornithologists' Union and several other learned societies, Dionne did much to popularize natural history in Canada with his articles in Naturaliste canadien and many books.