DesRuisseaux previously won the Governor General's Award for French language poetry in 1989 for his collection Monème.
He was also nominated for the Governor General's Award for English to French translation in 1996 for Contre-taille, an anthology of translated poetry by English Canadian writers.
DesRuisseaux was born in Sherbrooke, Quebec.
On 18 January 2016, he died at the age of 70.In 2017, it was revealed that in his volume of French language poetry, Tranches De Vie, DesRuisseaux had plagiarized a number of English language authors, including Maya Angelou, Dylan Thomas, Louis MacNeice, Charles Bukowski, Ted Kooser, and Tupac Shakur.
For some critics, the notion of plagiarism appears doubtful in this case.