Gerard Bouchard, History and Sociology, U of Quebec at Chicoutimi

Trained in sociology and history by the Annales school, Gerard Bouchard published his first book in Paris in 1972 : Le Village immobile : Sennely-en-Sologne au XVIIIe siecle (Plon). It is an essay in social history targeting a village of the Sologne region, in central France. Back to Quebec, he launched a huge social history project on the Saguenay region, located in North-Eastern Quebec and opened to settlement in the 1830s. One of the major goals of the project was to build a computerized population register to support the 125,000 reconstituted families of this regional population between 1838 and 1971. Over the years, the project has generated numerous articles and collections of essays, culminating in 1996 in the publication of a synthesis: Quelques arpents d'Amerique. Population, economie, famille au Saguenay, 1838-1971 (Montreal, Boreal).