Philippe Marchand

Philippe Marchand
Noted subjects	Science, French stuff
Current college	Berkeley (2008-?)
Past colleges	Ottawa (2004-2008)
High school	something before CEGEP
Stats	HDWhite • NAQT

Philippe Marchand is a former Genies en herbe player and member of Ottawa's quizbowl team.

Marchand helped establish the trivia club at Ottawa in 2003 with Ben Smith, Jeff Gordon, and Michelle Bishop. He was part of Ottawa's triple threat team with Dan Barber and Tamara Vardomskaya, picking up several wins and a DI sectional title for the club over the early years.

Marchand is notably francophone. Despite his willingness to hear questions in English, he had a tendency to give answers in French - to the confusion of non-francophone moderators. While this was easily forgiveable in Canada, Marchand entered matches against American teams with a disclaimer that he may answer in French, claiming that NAQT rules have no language requirements for common noun answers, only created works (rule 26) and place names (rule 20). Marchand managed to complete his quizbowl career without generating protests from this, though.

Marchand played the occasional tournament with Berkeley in fall 2008, where he is pursuing his PhD.

Outside of quizbowl, Marchand contributed to U of O's francophone newspaper, led protests and activist events, and was the communications executive for the graduate students' association. He was recognized by the English language newspaper for his selfless contributions to student advocacy [1]. A trivial math error on Marchand's master's thesis was a catalyst for the firing of controversial tenured U of O professor Denis Rancourt.