Henry de Puyjalon

Henry de Puyjalon (15 March 1841, in Floirac, Lot, France – 18 August 1905, in l'île à la Chasse, Havre-Saint-Pierre, Mingan Archipelago, Canada) was a late 19th-century scientist and explorer. He explored the north coast of the Saint Lawrence River, and was one of the first Canadian ecologists to suggest wildlife and marine conservation areas.

Henry de Puyjalon

Puyjalon graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Toulouse and emigrated to Quebec in 1874. He became a hunter, trapper, ornithologist, geologist and naturalist, and in 1880, a Quebec government employee with the task to explore for mineral wealth within Labrador. He became a Canadian citizen in 1888, and for the next three years the lighthouse keeper of Parrot Island on the Mingan Archipelago.

In 1897 Puyjalon was appointed Quebec's Inspector General of Fisheries and Wildlife, and used this position to encourage the government to establish protected marine areas and to publicise the dangers of over-exploitation, particularly through his books and technical literature.

The political opinions of Henry de Puyjalon are unknown, but he was friend with members of the Institut canadien de Montréal thus, Henry would have been very close to the Parti Rouge.[1]

An episode of the television series A Scattering of Seeds featured Puyjalon.