Rodrigue Levesque

Rodrigue Levesque is a French Canadian polyglot who travelled the world working on various development projects. On a trip to the Pacific, he became fascinated with Micronesia. He was horrified at the lack of published source material on the Islands, particularly the very early times. He spent decades, and enormous sums of his own money, digging for, and translating documents from around the world.

As explained in a 2014 Saipan Tribune article:

"According to Levesque, it was this experience of intrigue and mystery and the lack of history about Micronesia, compared to Polynesia and even Melanesia, that inspired him to start his decades-long project.

'I decided to let the world know about Micronesia and its interesting past,’ Levesque said.

Over the years he relentlessly pursued the project, scouring archives, libraries, and institutions of a dozen countries and languages to find source material—all of which he photocopied, photographed, or typed into a few laptops.”

Rod located and made novel translations of thousands of historical documents between 1992 and 2002. These were compiled in forty massive volumes, with only the first twenty being printed in physical form. The remainder of volumes 21 to 48 were published only in electronic form. Though the series has been widely cited by the small number of dedicated historians who publish academically on Micronesian topics, few, save a number of universities and museums, ever bought physical copies of these books.

Before devoting himself to the History of Micronesia, Levesque had served as a consultant on United Nations Development Programme projects in the Ghana and the former country of Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo), as well as on Canadian International Development Agency projects across Africa and South America.

He earned a diploma in International Cooperation, from the Institute for International Cooperation, University of Ottawa in 1979; a Master's Degree in Business Administration, from the University of Ottawa in 1974; and a Bachelor's Degree in Engineering, from McGill University, Montreal in 1967. Rod had also served as an officer in Royal Canadian Air Force, afterward continuing as a management consultant to the Directorate General of Management Consulting Services, National Headquarters, Department of National Defense.

Rod was a prolific author of many other books of a historical nature, covering subjects from various cultures around the world, most notably from the Philippines, Mexico and Peru.  He published these books via his company, Levesque Publications, which is no longer in business, though many of his works are still available for purchase.