Marguerite Primeau is one of only a handful of Francophone novelists from western Canada. Born in 1914 in Saint Paul, Alberta, she began her career teaching in rural Alberta schools and later earned her master's degree in French from the University of Alberta. She is an associate professor emerita at the University of British Columbia, where she taught French for twenty-five years. Maurice Dufault, sous-directeur was originally published in 1983.