Star historian Laurent Turcot, pinned for plagiarism last year, has been the subject of a new investigation in recent months by the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières for nearly 120 other alleged cases.
• To read also: A professor and star historian pinned for plagiarism
The University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières, where Mr. Turcot is a professor, appointed a committee this spring to examine these cases. According to our information, the committee submitted its report in the fall, but it was impossible to know whether a sanction was proposed.
“As this is a confidential process and personal information, we cannot provide details,” replied Jean-François Hinse, Communications and Media Relations Advisor, last Thursday.
At the end of April, Le Journal revealed that in the fall of 2021, an initial investigation had concluded that 13 passages from the book Sport and leisure, a history from the origins to the present day, published by Gallimard in 2016, were plagiarized.
The committee that carried out this first investigation saw it as a “lack of rigor in the creation and editing of the book”, but concluded that it was not a “deliberate and malicious use” of plagiarism. A letter of reminder of the rules of ethics had been sent to Mr. Turcot, but he had not received any sanction.
On Facebook, Mr. Turcot then offered his “apologies” for “these errors” which had “slipped” into this book. “I will do everything to make sure that doesn’t happen again,” he promised.
Dozens of other cases
But since then, sources whose identity we do not know have screened certain parts of Mr. Turcot’s books.
Thus, in Sports and Recreation, in addition to the 13 passages targeted by the first complaint, 97 other problematic borrowings were listed.
The same type of verification was carried out in a 2019 novel, L’homme de l’ombre Tome 2, L’invasion de 1775, published by Hurtubise. Result: 10 passages have obviously been taken word for word from other works, without quotation marks or reference to their author.
In particular a piece of sentence from Honoré de Balzac. As well as a sentence of the French encyclopaedist Denis Diderot (1713-1784): “… to gather the scattered knowledge on the surface of the earth; to expose the general system to the men with whom we live, and to transmit it to the men who will come after us.
“No one is immune”
In August 2021, when the first investigation into his book began, the historian had added, on his site laurentturcot.ca, a mention about his novel: “Informed readers will find here the references to the quotations in the book that we couldn’t do in the novels.”
He did not explain, however, what had prevented him from directly indicating the references in his novel.
In an email sent on December 15 to the Journal, Laurent Turcot affirms that “no one is immune to an error or omission in good faith”.
He claims to have “the greatest respect” for his sources. “To facilitate the reading of some of my books, […] my publisher and I have chosen to limit the use of quotation marks, which can make reading difficult”, he justifies.
Laurent Turcot’s most recent book, which quickly rose to the top of the sales charts after its publication last April, contains several passages that seem to come from other books or websites.
An anonymous source found a dozen disturbing cases in History will tell us, some of which we reproduce here.
Turcot writes for example: “Mass vaccination begins then, but the police must accompany each vaccinator since the attacks against the doctors multiply. Honoré Beaugrand, Freemason and anticlerical, is forced to seek the support of the bishopric. Mgr Fabre agrees to have a note read in the sermon encouraging the faithful to be vaccinated in addition to a circular from the Health Office explaining the harmless nature of the injection.
Except for a few words, it is a paragraph taken from an unsigned article entitled “Épidémie de variole au Québec”, published on the website Grandquebec.com, which claims to offer 12,000 popular texts dealing with “all the facets of Quebec”.
No quotes
Note that at the end of the essay History will tell us, Laurent Turcot draws up a list of the works he consulted to write his book.
He adds this warning: “We find here the complete reference of all the works cited or which inspired the writing of one passage or another of the book. It was decided not to use quotation marks excessively in order to make reading more pleasant and accessible.
However, of the 10 apparently plagiarized passages, only one comes from a book present in the list. The others seem to be copied and pasted passages from popular web pages, bits of text retouched in a few places. A situation similar to several of the 110 cases listed in Sports and Recreation.
For example, a passage on the first hockey game in history is almost identical to the French version of an article from The Canadian Encyclopedia (thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/fr), published in July 2013.
No mention of this text is found in the list of “works cited or which inspired” Laurent Turcot.
Made aware of these cases, Hurtubise, the publisher of History will tell us, did not respond to our interview requests.
A seasoned observer has identified several passages from the book History will tell us, by Laurent Turcot, which seem to come from other books or websites. Here are a few :
Extract 1
“Until 1950, it was mainly in Germany and Eastern Europe that Christmas decorations were produced. The figures are usually made of cotton and the angel hair of metallic fibers. As for the Christmas ball, it is originally an apple.
“Until 1950, it was mainly in Germany and Eastern Europe that Christmas decorations were produced. The figures are usually made of cotton and the angel hair of metallic fibers. As for the Christmas ball, it is originally an apple.
Source: The Christmas tree, December 3, 2007, testimonials.re/culture/culture-et-identite/l-arbre-de-noel,26405
Extract 2
“The very first game of ice hockey as we know it today is said to have been held in Montreal in 1875, when J. G. A. Creighton, a McGill student, established a set of formal rules. […] For hockey, the replacement of the ball by a flat disc out of wooden constitutes a key innovation. The flat disc bounces much less, which gives players better control and reduces the risk of injury to spectators.
“However, the very first game of ice hockey as we know it today was held in Montreal in 1875, when J. G. A. Creighton, a McGill student, established a set of formal rules. The replacement of the ball by a flat wooden disc (the puck) is a key innovation: the puck bounces much less, which gives more control to players and reduces the risk of injury to spectators.
Source : thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/fr/article/hockey-sur-glace
UQTR has made significant efforts to identify the whistleblower(s) who anonymously filed a plagiarism complaint with the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), a federal granting agency. It was this anonymous complaint that triggered the University’s first investigation.
A colleague of Laurent Turcot, Thierry Nootens, was suspended following this exercise. Mr. Nootens and the union contest this suspension.
You can see all of the cases alleged against Laurent Turcot below or by clicking here.
