Date Published:
January 2005

L’Encyclopédie de l’histoire du Québec / The Quebec History Encyclopedia

Étienne Parent

Parent, Étienne (1801-1874), journalist, was born at Beauport, near Quebec, Lower Canada, on May 2, 1801, and was educated at the College of Nicolet and the Quebec Seminary. From 1822 to 1825 he was editor of Le Canadien in Quebec; and in 1831, after several years devoted to the study of law, he revived this journal, and again became its editor. In this position he achieved an unrivalled place in French-Canadian journalism. He supported L. J. Papineau up to the outbreak of the rebellion of 1837; and, though he did not take part in the rebellion, he was arrested in 1837 and imprisoned. In 1841 he was elected for the county of Saguenay to the first Legislative Assembly of united Canada; but in 1842 a serious deafness, contracted in prison, compelled him to resign his seat. In the same year he gave up the editorship of Le Canadien, and accepted the post of clerk of the executive council. In 1847 he was appointed under-secretary for Lower Canada ; in 1867 he became under-secretary of state for the Dominion; and he retired from office in 1873. He died at Ottawa on December 22, 1874 . After his entrance into the civil service, he exerted as influence through public lectures which he delivered before the Institut Canadian and elsewhere; and these were collected and published after his death under the title Discours (Quebec, 1878). See B. Suite, Mélanges historiques (Montreal, 1928).

Source  : W. Stewart WALLACE, ed., The Encyclopedia of Canada, Vol. V, Toronto, University Associates of Canada, 1948, 401p., p. 86.