Louis-Ovide Brunet

Louis-Ovide Brunet

Louis-Ovide Brunet, priest, teacher, botanist (b at Québec City 10 Mar 1826; d there 2 Oct 1876). After working as a parish priest for 10 years, Brunet was offered a position as a science teacher at his alma mater, the Séminaire de Québec. In 1862 he succeeded Thomas Sterry HUNT as professor of natural history at Laval.

His numerous botanical field trips in Québec and Ontario, as well as 2 years spent in Europe visiting herbaria and attending courses given by experts at the Musée national d'histoire naturelle in Paris, provided him with basic training in botany, which was completed when he developed close contacts with Canadian and American botanists. He published his first original work in 1865.

By 1870 Brunet had become an expert botanist and was expected to undertake a study of Canada's flora. Strongly encouraged in this endeavour by the great American scholar Asa Gray, Brunet assembled an extensive set of notes which unfortunately were never published, his promising career having been cut short by illness.