After winning the Prix d'Europe for piano in 1937, he studied in Paris at the Schola Cantorum with Daniel Lesur (counterpoint) and Olivier Messiaen (organ).
During World War II he was interned in a Nazi concentration camp near Paris, but managed to escape and return to Canada in 1943.
He also composed music for numerous CBC Television dramas, including Federico García Lorca's Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba, and for several 1963 documentaries made by Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française.
He contributed music to theatrical productions mounted by the Nouvelle Compagnie Théâtrale, the Théâtre de l'Égrégoire, and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens.
He taught briefly at the Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal in 1952, and later rejoined that faculty on a permanent basis in 1965.