Gaston Bellemare
Gaston Bellemare (Trois-Rivières, QC) Retired from the leisure sciences, tourism and culture department of the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières in March 1997, Gaston Bellemare was co-founder, in 1970, of the publishing house Écrits des Forges, poésie internationale and president of the company (1983-2008), whose catalogue counts more than 1100 volumes of poetry. He was the founder (1985) and president of the Festival International de la Poésie. He also presided over the poetry publishers Groupe de création Estuaire (1976-2003), Éditions Arcade (1991-2003) and Éditions Gaz Moutarde (1992-2003). He is currently president of COPIBEC and has been a member of the board of the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec since 2007. As President of the Association Nationale des Éditeurs de livres (2004-2008), he won the prestigious Prix Georges-Émile-Lapalme from the Government of Quebec (2007) and the distinctive title of Officier de l’Ordre National du Québec (2002), the Prix de l’Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (2003) and the Prix Pythagore, catégorie Éducation, lettres et langues de l’Association des diplômés de l’Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (2005). He chaired the Symposium international sur le droit d’auteur (2004-2006), was a member of the board of Montréal Capitale Mondiale du Livre (2005-2006), was made an Honorary Member of The League of Canadian Poets (2004), Citoyen d’honneur du village de natal du poète et ex-président du Sénégal, Léopold Sédar Senghor and Membre du Conseil d’honneur du Centre québécois du P.E.N. International, since 2003.
A Member of the Ordre de Lavérendrye since 1991 –a civic honour attributed by the City of Trois-Rivières – he was the Initiator of the first world monument paying tribute to the unknown poet (1994, Designer of the first Promenade de la poésie (1994)which made it possible to read 300 excerpts of love poems on the walls of the city, and Initiator of 100 Bus Poems, in the buses of his city.
Since 2003, he has chaired the Fondation Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau.
Gaston Bellemare is the representative of the Association nationale des éditeurs de livres.
