Henri-Raymond Casgrain, Gedeon Ouimet and book prizes in schools from 1876to 1886

This article assesses the role of Abbe Henri-Raymond Casgrain in selling Ca nadian books offered as prizes in schools from 1876 to 1886. In the first p art, it is clearly demonstrated that the Abbe delivered to the Department o f Public Instruction not 175,000 volumes, as literary textbooks continue to suggest, but 80,000. Moreover, a careful reading of the Department's finan cial records shown that only a portion of the sums spent on school prizes w as attributed to Casgrain. While the Abbe profited by selling books to the Department, it must be acknowledged that these profits were much smaller th an what has been believed and now. This study establishes the facts of the situation by presenting new elements that give a better overall view of Cas grain's role in this affair.