Gérard Dion

Dion, Gérard

Gérard Dion, priest, sociologist, professor (b at Ste-Cécile de Frontenac, Qué 5 Dec 1912; d at Québec C 6 Nov 1990). After receiving his BA at the Collège de Lévis in 1935, Dion completed a degree in theology at Laval in 1939 and was ordained a priest. He continued his studies at Laval and in 1943 joined Laval's faculty of social sciences, becoming assistant director of the newly established department of industrial relations in 1946; he was director in 1957-63. He also edited Relations industrielles /Industrial Relations.

During the late 1940s and early 1950s he was an active member of the Commission sacerdotales d'études sociales, a committee of clerics established in 1948 to advise the Québec Assembly of Bishops on the numerous socioeconomic problems facing Québec society after WWII. Of particular concern were the roles to be adopted by the Confédération des travailleurs catholiques du Canada and the Association professionnelle des industriels.

During the 1950s he and his colleague Father Louis O'Neill became public figures when they published a scathing indictment of Québec politics entitled L'Immoralité politique dans la province de Québec. Father Dion published extensively on labour relations, especially on the evolution of the Catholic labour movement in the 1940s and 1950s. His most important publication is the Dictionnaire canadien des relations du travail (1976; 2nd ed 1986).