Jacques Grand'Maison

Educated in sociology (Rome) and theology (Montréal) he was a professor at the Faculty of theology at the Université de Montréal since 1965 (retired, professor emeritus as of 1998). Since the fifties, he has combined social and pastoral innovations with major publications integrating his experiences, and has thus contributed to shaping new social, economic and educational policies.

As of the fifties, for example, he initiated a pilot project for educating unemployed youth, accompanied by a study on the position of the professional education sector in Québec. His work would inspire the first Canadian legislation on retraining and reclassification of the workforce, and the reform of technical schools. He had already started to establish the basis of an original social pedagogy that would be an important influence on various socio-political movements, not to mention his theological and pastoral contributions within the Christian church. His commitment to youth was constant, as illustrated by extensive research that he directed throughout the 1990s on the relationships of generations of Québécois, followed by his participation in an influential group on the Generation Gap.

Throughout his career he received awards of note: le Prix des sciences humaines du Québec (1970); le Prix Esdras Mainville (1981); honorary doctorates from the universities of Sherbrooke (1987) and Laval in Québec (1998); and the prize from the Canadian Federation for the Social Sciences (1990).

Among his forty books, many translated into several languages, his hundred or so articles and literary and poetic essays are: Crise et prophétisme (1965); Le monde et le sacré (1967-1968); Vers un nouveau pouvoir (1969); Nationalisme et religion (1970); Nouveaux modèles sociaux et développements (1972); Symboliques d'hier et d'aujourd'hui (1973); La seconde évangélisation (1974); Des milieux de travail à réinventer (1976); Pour une pédagogie sociale d'autodéveloppement en éducation (1976); La nouvelle classe et l'avenir du Québec (1979); De quel droit? (1980). From 1992 to 1995, five books were drafted and published under his direction, dedicated to various intergenerational relationships.