Jules-Paul Tardivel
Jules-Paul Tardivel was a notable figure in the French Canadian cultural and political landscape, born in 1851 in Covington, Kentucky, to immigrant parents. Raised in a devoutly religious environment, Tardivel developed a deep connection to French Canadian culture during his studies at a seminary in Quebec. He began his career as a journalist, contributing to various publications, including Le Courrier and La Minerve, before founding the influential weekly newspaper La Vérité in 1881. This publication became a key platform for expressing French Canadian nationalism and promoting conservative Catholic views, despite its limited circulation. Tardivel's writings also included a significant essay critiquing theological modernism and a futuristic novel that envisioned an independent Quebec. His literary contributions and advocacy for French Canadian identity have left a lasting impact, as he continued to publish until his death in 1905, with his son later taking over the newspaper's editorship. Tardivel’s work reflects the complex interplay of religion, nationalism, and language that characterized his era.
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Jules-Paul Tardivel
Writer
- Born: September 2, 1851
- Birthplace: Covington, Kentucky
- Died: April 24, 1905
- Place of death: Quebec, Canada
Biography
Jules-Paul Tardivel was the son of immigrants to America, Claudius Tardivel, a Frenchman, and Isabella (Brent) Tardivel, an Englishwoman who had recently converted to Catholicism. Tardivel was born in Covington, Kentucky, in 1851, and raised in the religious household of his aunt Frances and uncle Julius Brent, a priest who led a parish in Mount Vernon, Ohio. Despite his French heritage, Tardivel was unfamiliar with the French language until around 1869, when at age eighteen he fatefully traveled to Quebec, Canada, for classical studies at Saint-Hyacinthe Seminary. Upon graduating around 1872, he returned to the United States briefly, but by that time he had grown to love the French Canadian culture, and he returned to Canada to pursue his career.
He was a journalist at Le Courrier in Saint-Hyacinthe and at La Minerve in Montreal before taking a position at Le Canadien in 1874. That same year, he married Henriette Brunelle, with whom he had five children: Isabella, Alice, Albertine, Paul, and Georgine. In 1878, Tardivel published his first long work, Vie du Pape Pie IX, ses oeuvres et ses douleurs, which explained the importance of the papacy to French Canada
With the support and encouragement of Father Zacharie Lacasse, who promoted the idea of an essentially Catholic newspaper, Tardivel in 1881 founded the weekly La Vérité, the first issue of which was distributed on July 14, 1881. The influential paper imbued with French Canadian nationalism communicated Tardivel’s personal political and religious beliefs and featured stories about conservative dogma and conspiracy theories. Although only three thousand copies of each issue were printed, schools widely subscribed to and relied on the newspaper. Some of Tardivel’s articles were collected in Mélanges: Ou, Recueil d’études religieuses, sociales, politiques et littéraires, published in three volumes between 1887 and 1903. Tardivel continued publishing La Vérité for the twenty-four years before his death, at which time his son took over editorship until the paper ended its run in 1920.
Tardivel is also remembered for his seminal essay “La situation religieuse aux États-Unis,” first published in 1900 in France, which presented a conservative Catholic response to proponents of theological modernism. In the 1890’s, Tardivel penned a futuristic novel about Canadian politics, Pour la patrie: Roman du vingtième siècle ( 1895; For My Country, 1975). The book accused Canada’s founding prime minister, John Alexander Macdonald, of conspiring to oppress Quebec and the French language and depicted the formation of an independent Quebec in 1945.