Pierre St. Jean

Pierre St-Jean was a Canadian doctor and politician.
St-Jean was born in Bytown in 1833. During the 1840s, he established a French language literary society there with J.B. Turgeon. He studied medicine at McGill College in Montreal and received his licence to practice medicine in 1855. He worked for a while with another doctor in Ottawa and then practiced in Saint-Denis, Quebec. He married there but his wife died in childbirth in 1857 and he returned to Ottawa in 1858. He was one of only three Franco-Ontarian doctors in Ottawa at the time. He became part of the staff at the hospital operated by Élisabeth Bruyère`s Sisters of Charity, later the Ottawa General Hospital. He served four terms as president of the L'Institut canadien-français d'Ottawa.
In 1874, he became the first French-speaking member from Ontario in the House of [Commons of Canada], representing Ottawa City. He was mayor of Ottawa from 1882 to 1883 being the first to have been born in it. During his term as mayor, the Canada [Atlantic Railway] link to Ottawa was completed.
Following his term as mayor, he remained on staff at the Ottawa General Hospital until 1898 and also worked at the Public Works and [Government Services Canada|Department of Public Works].
He died in Ottawa in 1900.