Le Cimetière de Sainte-Marie, Le Havre, Seine-Maritime (76): #1: Octave Crémazie

Octave Crémazie (1827-79) is undoubtedly an important poet from the Canadian province of Québec. The bookshop his brother Joseph founded in 1833 was much enhanced by Octave's literary knowledge, and was for a time very notable in Québec city. On the note by his cenotaph in le cimetière Sainte-Marie we don't exactly get the full story: it says that the bookshop failed, that Crémazie went to France in exile in 1862 under the assumed name Jules Fontaine, but not that the bookshop failed largely due to Crémazie's wild extravangances, nor that he fled from Canada due to his fraudulent activities. In France he lived in poverty and died in Le Havre but was buried in obscure Ingouville with just a wooden cross as a grave. This cenotaph is the real tribute to his work.