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Dr. Claude Treil, Professor of French literature and civilization, taught at Bishop’s University from 1969 to 1989. Born in France in 1921, he joined the resistance shortly after the Nazi occupation of his country in 1940, was arrested and imprisoned by the Gestapo, escaped through Spain (another seven months in Franco's jails) and joined the Free French Forces in North Africa in 1943. In 1944 he was sent as liaison officer with the British 2nd Army and, after an eventful campaign in France, Belgium, Holland and Germany in 1944-45, he was awarded the croix de guerre avec citation." He went back to civilian life in Paris and, as he put it, “had a taste of liberated life.”
He came to Victoria, British Columbia, in 1949 for two years as lecturer at Victoria College and spent another two years teaching at University of British Columbia (U.B.C.) in Vancouver. Back in France in 1953 , he married concert-pianist Marie-Aimee Varro in Paris, then resumed teaching at U.B.C. from 1955 to 1966 and Dalhousie University in Halifax from 1966 to 1969. His wife made her last public appearance at a memorable recital in Bishop's Centennial Theatre in March 1971. She died of cancer a few months later.
Professor Treil got his French Baccalaureat in Besancon, France, and a license d’anglais at the Sorbonne in Paris. He holds a B.A. from U.B.C., an M.A. and a Ph.D. from Laval University in Quebec. He had worked for the C.B.C. radio and television school broadcasts and had given public lectures in many clubs, schools and universities in Canada, mostly in connection with his book on L’Indifference dans l'oeuvre d'Albert Camus. (Source: Alumni Newsletter, June 1989, by Howard Brown, Professor of Music)