Jean Chapdelaine

Joseph Marc Antoine Jean Chapdelaine (1914 – February 1, 2005), more commonly known as Jean Chapdelaine or J. A. Chapdelaine, He was also an important figure in the development of Quebec Government Offices and has been called the 'Father of Quebec diplomacy'.

Biography Chapdelaine attended Collège Sainte-Marie de Montréal and was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship in 1934, studying PPE at Hertford College, Oxford.

Chapdelaine joined the Department for External Affairs in 1937. Chapdelaine attended the third session of the Food and Agriculture Organization conference in 1947, and the second session of the interim commission of the World Health Organization in 1948.

From January to July 1950, Chapdelaine was the chargé d'affaires to Ireland. and from 1963 to 1964 he was ambassador to Sudan and Egypt (then still called the United Arab Republic). He held the post until 1976 when he returned to Canada to work as an adviser in the office of Premier René Lévesque. He later became Quebec's delegate-general in Brussels before retiring as a diplomat in the 1980s.

Chapdelaine was also given an honorary doctorate in social sciences from the Université Laval in 1975.