George-Édouard-Amable Desbarats was born April 5, 1838, in Quebec, Canada.

He was a lawyer, printer, inventor, and publisher. In 1846, he was sent to the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. In 1852, he enrolled at the Collège Sainte-Marie in Montreal to finish his secondary studies, followed by studying law at the Université Laval. Undecided about whether to become a lawyer or to go into business with his father, queen’s printer, he went on a trip to Europe. On his return, he passed the bar of Lower Canada in 1859 but chose to begin working with his father in the firm of Desbarats et Derbishire. In 1864, upon his father's death, he inherited the business and became co-queen's printer for the Province of Canada. His partner Malcolm Cameron, replacing Stewart Derbishire after his death in 1863, became the new queen's printer. The firm published more than a dozen literary, historical, religious, biographical, and scientific works. Desbarats Block building, housing printing and binding equipment, constructed in Ottawa, was burned down by arson in 1869. In his Montreal business, he went into partnership with engraver William Augustus Leggo (1830-1915). In 1869, Prime Minister John A. Macdonald (1815-1891) made Desbarats the first official Printer of the Dominion of Canada. In 1870, he stepped down when he found it too difficult to run businesses in both Ottawa and Montreal and he returned to Montreal. The firm launched the Canadian Illustrated News, using Leggo's photo-engraving process (leggotype) for reproducing line drawings or black and white engravings. In 1873, they founded the New York Daily Graphic, the world’s first illustrated daily. The venture proved financially disastrous. Desbarats went into personal bankruptcy and opened a small printing atelier in Montreal that he left to three of his sons.

In 1860, he married Lucianne Bosse (1838–1926). He died on February 18, 1893, in Ottawa, Ontario and is buried in Montreal, Quebec.