Mr. Speaker, a great wordsmith has left us. Although his work may not appear in any collections, it echoes throughout our land.
Henri Dorion was a geographer, toponymist, professor, diplomat and architect of the Quiet Revolution. As the first president of the Commission de toponymie du Québec, he recorded and standardized place names throughout Quebec. He chaired the Commission d'étude sur l'intégrité du territoire du Québec, the first major effort to define our borders in detail, a task that remains unfinished to this day.
Henri Dorion made a name for himself himself internationally as Quebec's delegate to Mexico, Russia and Ukraine, and as the chair of the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names.
On behalf of the Bloc Québécois, I would like to offer my condolences to his four daughters and all his loved ones. His memory will live on throughout our vast homeland.