In 1852, as a student of the Séminaire de Québec, he traveled with Louis-Jacques Casault to London where they arranged for the royal charter of what would become Laval University.

After his ordination in 1854, he was sent to Paris' École des Carmes and eventually graduated from the Sorbonne with a license in science, before returning to Quebec to teach at the Séminaire, also acquiring the office of general secretary of the new university.

He became rector of the Séminaire de Québec and Laval University (1871–1880, 1883–1886, librarian from 1888) and a founder as well as a president (1886–1887) of the Royal Society of Canada.

In 1881, he led a delegation to Rome to argue against the independence of the Montreal branch (which would ultimately become the Université de Montréal).

Hamel wrote a biography of Elzéar-Alexandre Taschereau (Le Premier Cardinal Canadien, 1888) and a manual of rhetoric (Un Cours d'éloquence parlée d'après Delsarte, 1906).