Paul De Koninck/Courtesy of the De Koninck family
When Thomas De Koninck’s three sons were young, their mother always said: “Your father is a man from another planet.”
A philosopher and professor for over five decades at Laval University in Quebec City, Dr. De Koninck spent much of his time contemplating existence, human frailty and God. With a predilection for the dialectic of ancient Greeks like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, he was not a handy man by nature. He did not shovel snow or mow the lawn, but he had the ability to focus on someone, no matter if it was a child or adult, and engage them in a dialogue that left both of them enriched.
“We all thought it was normal because it was our family,” said his son Marc De Koninck, the eldest. “But when others came to our house, it was clear to them that he was a little different, intellectual and abstract. Sometimes, he spoke with his eyes closed, or looking up at the ceiling.”
His blond hair, blue eyes and boundless curiosity make it easy to see why Dr. De Koninck was thought to have been an inspiration for the titular character from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, a fictional boy with golden curls, a delighted laugh and a maddening tendency to answer questions with ones of his own.
When young Thomas met the famous author and aviator in 1942, he was just eight years old, a pint-sized philosopher in the making who asked all sorts of questions and delighted in challenging repartee. Mr. De Saint-Exupéry had been invited to stay at the family’s stately stone home in Quebec City’s old Haute-Ville by young Thomas’s father, Charles De Koninck, a renowned philosopher in his own right.
Copies of the book 'The Little Prince' by Antoine de Saint-Exupery.VALENTINE CHAPUIS/AFP/Getty Images
At one party, despite the presence of much of the province’s intellectual glitterati, the author preferred to spend his time talking with the De Koninck children, of whom Thomas was the eldest. They all made paper airplanes and there were conversations that featured the straightforward fearlessness of a boy exchanging ideas and solving mathematics puzzles with the man who would publish The Little Prince the following year.
“I recall his visit quite well because he was l’Aviateur, the Pilot,” Dr. De Koninck told author Sigal Samuel. “He was a hero for us.”
Ms. Samuel interviewed him for an article in 2014 exploring competing theories as to which real-life boy was the model for Mr. De Saint-Exupéry’s little prince. Her search was ultimately inconclusive.
In a 2023 interview with Radio-Canada’s Michel Désautels to mark the 80th anniversary of The Little Prince, Dr. De Koninck said one of his favourite scenes in the book is when the Narrator, frustrated by his attempts to draw a sheep, dashes off a simple box and claims the sheep is inside.
“It is that drawing that satisfies the Little Prince – the sheep he couldn’t see,” the philosopher said. “I love that notion, seeing with the heart rather than the eyes.”
This was Dr. De Koninck’s way throughout life, a man who never forgot the wonder of imagination and belief, full of love and who gave off the sense sometimes that his head was in the clouds but still he was able to come to down to earth in an instant and enjoy playing basketball with his boys.
Surrounded by family, he died on Feb. 16 in a hospital in Quebec City, alert, questioning and listening until the end. He was 91. He had been experiencing a variety of medical issues that come with advancing age.
“For him, life was a conversation,” Marc De Koninck said. “He had a Socratic approach with us, with his students and with everyone he met. It was about connection. He always said he continued to work because it allowed him to be connected.
“He was so proud of us too. He called us the ‘three thinkers.’”
A drawing from an original colour signed copy of 'Le Petit Prince' by late French author and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupery, is pictured at the Cazo auction house in December, 2016, in Paris.PHILIPPE LOPEZ/AFP/Getty Images
Thomas De Koninck was born on March 26, 1934, in Leuven, Belgium, the eldest of Charles De Koninck and Zoe Decruydt’s 12 children (one, a daughter, died at birth). His father, Charles, began working at Quebec City’s Laval University as a philosophy professor that same year and served as dean of the faculty from 1939 to 1956. His mother was kept busy caring for and educating her offspring; later, she worked as a translator.
The children were all brilliant and went into various fields, from art history to geography, medicine and communications. Young Thomas followed in his father’s footsteps, nurturing his love of the Greek philosophers with a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford University from 1956 to 1959, followed by studies back at home at Laval, then at the Freie Universität Berlin.
At Oxford, he developed a love for all things British, from Shakespeare to the Jeeves and Wooster stories of P.G. Wodehouse. It was there that he also met the woman to whom he would be married for 65 years, Christine Vincent, a Frenchwoman who was living in the same boarding house as him.
“Theirs was a union of love,” said Paul De Koninck, their youngest son. “Throughout our childhood, we would hear him call her names like ‘my little sunshine.’ Our mother was more restrained and pragmatic. She took charge of things such as snow removal and repairs.”
In the early 1960s, Dr. De Koninck spent a few years teaching philosophy at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, then returned to Laval in 1964. His tenure included serving as dean of the Faculty of Philosophy from 1974 to 1978, overseeing more than 200 master’s and PhD theses and garnering the love and respect of students and faculty alike.
“Of all the philosophy professors I have had the privilege of knowing, he is certainly the one who has had the greatest influence on the generation that followed,” philosopher Georges Leroux, an emeritus professor at the University of Quebec at Montreal, told the publication Le Devoir.
Dr. De Koninck at Oxford in 1958.Paul De Koninck/Courtesy of the De Koninck family
Laval rector Sophie D’Amours paid tribute in a news release, calling him a “shining man whose rigorous thinking was always oriented toward human dignity and the great questions of existence.”
Dr. De Koninck was the author of hundreds of articles, essays and books, including De la dignité humaine (On Human Dignity) published in 1995, for which he was awarded Prix La Bruyère de l’Académie française, a literary prize that honours publications that deal with the questions of moral philosophy.
It was a work years in the making, recalled his middle son, Yves De Koninck, who said there were two great phases to his father’s working life. In the first three decades, he was dedicated to teaching students and to his steadfast belief in the importance of the Faculty of Philosophy, period.
The publication of De la dignité humaine marked the beginning of the second phase, in which he wrote about issues and ideas that had percolated for years and appeared in some form or another in shorter essays.
“De la dignité humaine was the principal work of his life,” Yves continued. “He needed to question ideas that were compatible and holistic.”
Dr. De Koninck, who finished his career at Laval as an emeritus professor, received numerous other honours including an induction as a member of the Royal Society of Canada in 2002 and being invested as a member of the Order of Canada in 2005.
Marc De Koninck said that for a man who spent his life nurturing students, sons and grandchildren, it was not surprising that one of his father’s passions was gardening, especially the planting of trees. He always made sure to dig a big hole, bigger than anyone else, before carefully setting the sapling – a poplar, maple or oak tree – into the ground.
Asked why he insisted on such big holes, Dr. De Koninck’s answer was simple. “The roots need room to grow,” he said.
In addition to his sons, Dr. De Koninck leaves his wife, Ms. Vincent, eight of his siblings and seven grandchildren.
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