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Peintre, penseur, poète, épistolier, président de commission scolaire, conseiller municipal et pomiculteur, Leduc sut aussi bien collaborer avec les politiciens, les représentants du clergé et les artistes d’avant-garde que ses concitoyens. Dans sa sagesse et sa diplomatie, il semble toujours avoir perçu les divergences d’opinions de ses contemporains comme autant de facettes d’un tout indissociable.
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Artist, thinker, poet, letter writer, president of school commission, city councilor, and apple grower, Leduc also knew how to collaborate with politicians, representatives of the Church, and avant-garde artists as well as citizens. In his widom and diplomacy, he also seemed to perceive the diverging opinions of his contemporaries as facets of an inseparable whole. This vision is summarized in a presentation Leduc made to the Saint Hyacinth Historical Society, in 1930: “I tried to make my art come alive, by considering our little hometown, Saint Hilaire, as an entity that would be our work of art and that everyone, all of its inhabitants, working in concert, would perfect and improve!” (Cited in “Hommage à Ozias Leduc”, in the Cahier d’histoire of the Beloeil-Mont-Saint-Hilaire Historical Society, 17th year, N. 49, February 1996. [English translation: Alexis Diamond]) Having lived in the region myself, I wrote the work as a response to his call.
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