Augustin-Norbert Morin

Augustin-Norbert Morin (October 13, 1803 – July 27, 1865) was a Canadien journalist, lawyer, politician, and rebel in Lower Canada. Although he participated in the Lower Canada Rebellion, the British authorities concluded his conduct did not warrant a charge of high treason. After the Rebellion, he entered politics in the Province of Canada, eventually becoming joint premier of the Province. Retiring from politics due to health concerns, Morin was appointed to the bench. He was one of the commissioners who codified the law of Lower Canada, producing the Civil Code of Lower Canada which stayed in force for over a century. Early life and family Morin was born in 1803 in Saint-Michel-de-Bellechasse, Lower Canada, son of Augustin Morin, a farmer, and Marianne Cottin, dit Dugal. He was the eldest of eleven children, of a family that had been in Canada for seven generations. The Morin family was not well-off. The young Augustin-Norbert owed his classical education to the local parish priest, Abbé Thomas Maguire, who identified him as a boy of exceptional talent and intelligence when Augustin-Norbert was learning his catechism. Abbé Maguire arranged for Morin's education at the Petit Séminaire de Québec, beginning in 1815. Morin grew to be a tall man, above average height, but he also developed rheumatism at a young age, which gradually grew worse as the years passed. He also had a diffident, retiring personality which masked his intellectual abilities and in some ways was ill-suited to political life. He had a talent for hard work throughout his life. Morin did not marry until quite late in life. In 1843, at the age of forty, he married Adèle Raymond, daughter of merchant Joseph Raymond, and sister of Father Joseph-Sabin Raymond, the superior of the Séminaire de Saint-Hyacinthe. Another of her brothers, Rémi Raymond, was elected to the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada in 1863.