(30 Sept. 1928-23 Nov. 1999), teacher, francophone rights activist. (Jeannine Séguin, Mme rather than Mlle Séguin in later years) Born in Alexandria, GC. Parents: Hormisdas Séguin and his wife Lydia Brunet. Jeannine Séguin attended primary school in Alexandria and secondary school in Hawkesbury. She received her B. A. (1959) and M. Ed. (1969) from the Université d’Ottawa, and her Baccalauréat en théologie (1999) from the Université de Sherbrooke. At the University of Toronto she also studied education and at Queen’s University she took training as a secondary school principal. She taught elementary school in Northern Ontario, and at the École du Sacré-Coeur in the 8th Concession of Lancaster Township, GC, and at the École du Perpétuel Secours in Alexandria, and then was a high school teacher in Cornwall, where she was principal first of the École secondaire Saint-Laurent and then (1973-1980) of its successor, École secondaire La Citadelle, of which she was one of the founders. She served as president of the Association des enseignantes et des enseignants franco-ontariens (1973-1974), L’Association canadienne-française de l’Ontario (1978-1980), and Féderation des francophones hors Québec (1980-1983). The many honours she received included the medal Bene Merenti (1962), the Order of Canada (1985), and an honorary doctorate from the Université Sainte-Anne in Nova Scotia (1991). She never married. She died in Cornwall General Hospital. Roman Catholic. She is buried in the Sacré-Coeur cemetery, Alexandria.
Active in a very wide range of francophone institutions and groups, Jeannine Séguin contributed to building up the educational and other institutions of the Franco-Ontarians, and in particular she was a leader in securing for Franco-Ontarians the opportunity for a full education in their own language. She was a resident of Cornwall from the time she began to teach there till her death. Her activities as an activist related principally to Cornwall, but more generally to francophone Ontario. They seem to have had relatively little specific reference to her native Glengarry, and except in marginal ways she seems to have been involved in no mainly GC issues. To someone who never knew her, reviewing her life on the basis of mainly printed evidence, the conclusion is that she was amiable rather than abrasive. Successful and even powerful though she was as an organizer, she was a promoter of joint effort rather than an individualistic seeker after personal publicity.
Glengarry News 1 Dec. 1999 * special commemorative issue in her honour, Le Journal de Cornwall, 2 Dec. 1999: valuable, with portraits, tributes, much biog. detail * private information * Senior & Marin: index (these authors are indispensable guides through the complex Cornwall secondary school history) * Choquette: index * Charles Dufresne and others, Dictionnaire de l’Amérique française: Francophonie nord-américaine hors Québec (1988) 340