Dans un Petit Village

The news of Etienne Parent and Jean - Baptiste's arrest travelled quickly and soon there was a small entourage of friends accompanying them to the Quebec Citadelle. It is stated who those friends but I would say that among them were Napoleon Aubin, the owner and editor or the journal, Le Fantasque, Stanislas Drapeau, journalist, printer, and publisher, who at the time of this event was a typographer for Le Fantasque, among others. Etienne Parent was well known and widely admired not only throughout lower Canada but throughout all of North America including the United States.  When the group arrived at the Citadelle the chief of police informed them that he had received orders from his superiors in Montreal to prevent all visitors from seeing Etienne Parent and Jean - Baptiste Frechette unless they members of their direct family. It would be an understatement to say that the arrest of Etienne Parent and Jean - Baptiste Frechette caused a significant stir in the lower Canada. Not the...

On Monday, December 24, 1838, (Christmas Eve), Etienne Parent, the editor of Le Canadien, one of the most popular and political French language newspapers in Lower Canada wrote an inflammatory editorial to protest the treatment of patriotes who participated in the uprising in Lower Canada. It was an denunciation of the John Colborne's (the governor of Lower Canada) arbitrary measures. After the rebellion in Lower Canada was put down in 1837 the British government suspended the constitution that was created in 1791, dissolved the Legislative Assembly and created the the Special Council which effectively became the government of Lower Canada. The Special Council had all of the authority of the Legislative assembly. Their mandate was to re-establish peace and order in Lower Canada. Since there was no political process in Lower Canada, no elections or elected assembly, the Special Council could do whatever they wanted without having to worry about the wishes of the local population. ...

Up to this point, I have writing post about each of my direct ancestors, maternal and paternal. To be fair, I alternated from one side of the family to the other for each post. Starting with this post I am going to go in a slightly difference direction and, for the foreseeable future, I will focus my post on one ancestor, Etienne Parent. During the course of researching my parent ancestors I discovered Etienne Parent (1802 - 1874). He is not a direct ancestor. Etienne is descended from Etienne Parent, one of the original triplets of Pierre Parent and Jeanne Badeau. That would make Etienne Parent an uncle. Sorry, I have not worked out our exact relationship. Our relationship is not that important to my research. I have been researching Etienne Parent for over an year and I have collected an enormous amount of information from a variety of sources; Library and Archives Canada (LAC), The Internet Archives, Geneanet, Family Search, and a number of internet queries. As you can see i hav...

La maison Étienne Parent is the last of the historical Parent family homes that we visited on our walk around historical Beauport. There were other houses that we could have visited but there was no more time. Besides, it is a reason to visit Beauport again some time in the future. It is a bit misleading to call this house, 'la maison Étienne Parent'. Yes, it is true that Étienne Parent was born in this house but he was such a remarkable student and his intelligence was readily apparent to his family that he was sent to the college of Nicolet for his secondary education. Nicolet college was one of the schools in Quebec at that time. Other than returning to his parents home during summer vacations to work on the family farm , Étienne never lived in this house again. Étienne Parent was without a doubt the most remarkable member of our family, if not one of the most remarkable men during 19th Century Quebec. He was a lawyer, a journalist, a philosopher, a politician but...