Honorific-Prefix: | Mayor |
Elzéar Bédard | |
Order: | Member of the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada |
Constituency: | Montmorency |
Term Start: | July 1832 |
Term End: | February 1836 |
Predecessor: | Philippe Panet |
Successor: | Nicolas Lefrançois |
Order2: | 1st Mayor of Quebec City |
Term Start2: | 1 May 1833 |
Term End2: | 31 March 1834 |
Successor2: | René-Édouard Caron |
Birth Date: | 24 July 1799 |
Birth Place: | Quebec City, Lower Canada |
Death Place: | Montreal, Canada East |
Spouse: | Julie-Henriette Marett (m. May 1827) |
Profession: | lawyer, judge |
Elzéar Bédard (24 July 1799 – 11 August 1849) was a lawyer and a member of the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada. He later became a judge.
He was born at Quebec City in 1799, the son of Pierre-Stanislas Bédard. Bédard received a typical education for the time which he completed in 1818. He then pursued a career in the priesthood but abandoned this and in 1819 articled to become a lawyer which took place in 1824. By 1830, he was involved in provincial politics and ran unsuccessfully in Kamouraska. He won a by-election in 1832 for Montmorency, a riding left vacant by Philippe Panet. He aligned himself with Louis-Joseph Papineau's Patriote party program and in 1834 was the member who introduced the Ninety-Two Resolutions, although likely he did not have a significant role in the preparation.
He was the first mayor of Quebec City, (1833–1834), but lost the next election to René-Édouard Caron. A close friend and supporter of Lord Gosford, he was appointed a judge of the Court of King's Bench in 1836, an appointment that was called bribery by his radical adversaries in the Patriote party.