Norman Desmarais is professor emeritus at Providence College, Providence, Rhode Island, and an active reenactor. He is a member of Le Régiment Bourbonnais, the 2nd Rhode Island Regiment and the Brigade of the American Revolution. He translated the Gazette Françoise, the French newspaper published in Newport, Rhode Island by the French fleet that brought the Comte de Rochambeau and 5,800 French troops to America in July 1780. He also translated and annotated Louis-François- Bertrand du Pont d'Aubevoye, comte de Lauberdière's journal, published as The Road to Yorktown: The French Campaigns in the American Revolution, 1780-1783 (Savas Beatie 2021). Norm also gathered and compiled an extensive, if not exhaustive, collection of Revolutionary War era diaries, journals and memoirs, many of them difficult to obtain. These primary sources include British, Irish, Scottish, German, American, French, Spanish and Swedish perspectives. They have all been digitized in searchable PDF format. Mr. Desmarais served as Vice President of Le Foyer Club and the Richelieu Club (which became the Aram Pothier Club), social organizations for the preservation and promotion of the French language and culture. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Boivin Center, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. He was a pioneer in the CD-ROM industry. He set up and managed the first CD-ROM network in Rhode Island and served as Senior Editor of CD-ROM World, contributing editor of Optical Information Systems, and was the founding editor and editor-in-chief of Electronic Resources Review. He is listed in the International Directory of Distinguished Leadership, the Dictionary of International Biography, Who's Who of Information Technology, 2000 Outstanding Intellectuals of the 20th Century, and Marquis Who's Who. Norm was inducted into the American French Genealogical Society French-Canadian Hall of Fame in 2015 and received the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019 and 2020.
