Antonine Maillet

Is there a name as intimately associated with Acadia as Antonine Maillet? By creating the now-legendary character of La Sagouine in the early 1970s, Antonine Maillet restored the nobility of the popular language of Acadia, the borderless homeland of this French-speaking people born in Atlantic Canada.

After receiving her PhD in literature from Université Laval in 1970, Antonine Maillet taught literature and folklore at Université Laval and then in Montreal between 1971 and 1976. She then worked for Radio-Canada in Moncton as a scriptwriter and host.

In 1976, she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and promoted to Companion in 1981. In 1979, her novel Pélagie-la-Charette, which evokes the Great Upheaval of 1755 (the genocidal deportation of the Acadians by the British), won the Prix Goncourt, giving her the distinction of being, along with Atiq Rahimi, the only non-European personality to receive this award. That same year, the city of Outremont renamed Wilder Street, where she lives, to Antonine Maillet Avenue, to honor the Prix Goncourt recipient.

In 1985, she was made an Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de France, and in 2005 she was inducted into the Order of New Brunswick. Chancellor of the Université de Moncton, she is the author of numerous popular novels and plays. In her works, she is always inspired by the history and folklore of Acadia.

In Ginette Pellerin's documentary "Les possibles sont infinis," dedicated to her, Antonine Maillet speaks publicly for the first time about the great love of her life, Mercédès Palomino, co-founder with Yvette Brind'amour of the Théâtre du Rideau Vert in Montreal, where La Sagouine was first performed in 1972.

In 2018, on the eve of her 90th birthday, Antonine Maillet participated in the second edition of Acadie Love in Caraquet. It was the first time the renowned writer had been involved with an LGBT event.