[citation needed] He made his fortune by selling what he marketed as the petites pilules rouges (little red pills),[8] a drug against anemia, intended for women's use.

The latter's well-known gouache painting Le vieux de '37 seems to have been sponsored by Mignault, and as of 2009, the work is still in the family's personal collection.

Mignault gained notoriety as a philanthropist in 1909, as he offered some of his lands in downtown Montreal to establish a playground for poverty-stricken children.

Despite Canada's relatively modest population, Borden had recently committed his country into providing half a million soldiers for the Allied cause.

Through French Canadian newspapers and media hype, the ranks of the newly formed battalion were filled in less than a month.

[17] Several French figures attended the ceremony, namely the Canadian Minister of Overseas Military Forces, Sir George Perley, prominent historian and member of the Académie Française, Gabriel Hanotaux, chief of French medical service, Justin Godart, and High Commissioner of Canada in Paris, Philippe Roy.

As Major General Sir Eugène Fiset congratulated him for his services in the name of the Canadian Ministry of Militia and Defence, France beset him the title of Knight of the Legion of Honour.

Designated a federal recruiting agent at the beginning of that year, he pursued his mobilising activities among French Canadians.

[22] Despite his expulsion from the army in 1918, following the end of the war, Mignault continued to promote the military service to young French Canadian physicians.

[23] In the years following the war, he cadged the title of Brigadier General to the medical corps, but saw his entreaties refused time and again.

Nonetheless, towards the end of his life, his services in World War I were indeed recognised, and, a month before his death in 1937, he was granted the honorary rank of Brigadier General.