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BERTHELET, ANTOINE-OLIVIER, businessman, mha, and philanthropist; b. 25 May 1798 at Montreal, son of Pierre Berthelet*, a doctor who had become wealthy through trade, and Marguerite Viger; d. 25 Sept. 1872 in the same town.

Antoine-Olivier Berthelet was educated at the college of Montreal, where his fellow-students included Côme-Séraphin Cherrier*, John Donegani*, and Édouard-Raymond Fabre*. On his father’s death in 1830, he launched out into business. He had foreseen that the town of Montreal would develop rapidly eastwards, and he bought up huge stretches of land which he sold again at a profit or made over as outright gifts to charitable institutions. As member of the assembly for Montreal East from 1832 to 1834, Berthelet realized that politics was not the field in which he could most usefully serve his compatriots. He did however lend his name and prestige to patriotic organizations. Thus he was one of the members of the Fils de la Liberté in 1837; however, he does not seem to have favoured recourse to arms. Berthelet likewise joined the Institut Canadien in Montreal, but he resigned after the intervention of Bishop Ignace Bourget*, who in 1858 condemned the institute and its liberalism. He belonged to a generation among whom by far the most widely held opinion was that Catholicism was one of the elements essential to French Canadian patriotism.

His great-grandson, the engineer Alfred Larocque, has demonstrated that during the last 25 years of his life Antoine-Olivier Berthelet lived in retirement from business and devoted himself entirely to charitable works. According to statistics prepared by Larocque, he gave more than $400,000, an incredible sum for the period, to charitable and educational institutions. In addition there were other acts of generosity of which the extent is not known. There was virtually no community in Montreal that did not benefit from his liberality: Sisters of Providence, Society of Jesus, Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Sisters of Mercy, Good Shepherd Nuns, Sisters of St Ann, Society of the Sacred Heart, Brothers of Charity, and so on. All these religious groups still exist today, and several owe their survival to the timely bounty of Antoine-Olivier Berthelet. In 1868, when Zouaves were being recruited to defend the papal states, he contributed personally as president of the committee, and from his own funds assumed the travel and maintenance costs for 20 soldiers of the pope.

The flourishing development of charitable works that marked Bishop Bourget’s episcopate has been rightly admired, but it is fair to say that this success would have been neither so spectacular nor so durable if the bishop had not had the full collaboration of someone who might be called his minister of finance; a finance minister of a rare kind who did not seek to get the money from the pockets of others, but who taxed himself. Indeed, in his last years Antoine-Olivier Berthelet reduced his style of living in order to be able to give more.

In 1844, Cardinal Joseph Fransoni, prefect of the Propaganda, addressed a letter of thanks to him for his services to the church, and sent him a medal bearing the effigy of Gregory XVI; in 1864, Father Pierre Beck, general of the Society of Jesus, granted him the title of distinguished benefactor; and in 1869 he was named commander of the Order of Pius IX, in recognition of the outstanding part he had taken in the recruitment and organization of the Zouaves.

Antoine-Olivier Berthelet died on 25 Sept. 1872; his funeral took place at Notre-Dame, and attracted a large crowd. It was the collective farewell of all Montreal to a man who had only friends and who had given happiness to many. His body was placed in the church of Saint-Joseph, which he had built in Rue Cathédrale and which he had subsequently made over to the Grey Nuns. When this church was demolished in 1930 his remains were moved to the cemetery of the Grey Nuns’ mother house.

On 30 Oct. 1822 Berthelet had married Marie-Angélique Chaboillez, by whom he had a daughter, Amélia, who married François-Alfred-Chartier Larocque. Of his second marriage with Charlotte, Louis Guy’s daughter, there were no children.

Léon Pouliot