Interviewed by: William Hoffman
Videotaped by: Donald Arneson
Perrizo Family History Committee

Hoffman

On behalf of the Perrizo Family History Committee and the many descendants of Michel Delpé Pariseau and Pelagie DesRochers Brien, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to talk about the Perrizo family and its New World origin in Québec. It is a great honor and a source of family pride to have someone with the international stature of Jacques Parizeau participate in this effort and remind all of us -- in this time of great change -- that family is indeed the 'tie that binds' through time and space.

Parizeau

[first in French, then English] I'd like to thank you for this opportunity to give my best wishes to a branch of the family that until two weeks ago I didn't know even existed. I knew there were Parizeaus in the United States, but I didn't know how numerous they were. For me, it is a discovery, and I thank you for that discovery.

Hoffman

What do you know about Jean Dalpé dit Parisot, his early life in Aveyron, France, and the famous Carignan-Salières Regiment he was part of that was sent to Québec by King Louis XIV?

Parizeau

Not much about the man himself. He came from Rodez, which is strange. Very few settlers in Québec came from the south of France. Most came from Normandy, Brittany, Charente, or the La Rochelle area. We never knew why that chap had entered the army to start with, probably for the usual reasons at that time. About his stay here, well yes, we know the same things that I found in your papers. The man worked hard and finally was slaughtered by the Indians. That was later on. But I never knew that his wife married twice after that. I learned that from your papers.

I also knew that the family had organized itself in the Varennes area, near Montréal, and had stayed there for a long, long time. I gather that the Perrizo branch in the United States settled in Wisconsin in the middle of the [19th] century, and in the rural setting. They worked a farm. Here, it was the opposite. The Parizeau family, from Varennes, became just about the same time urban. From then on it developed in Montréal -- in business and the professions. In a way, at just about the moment that the Perrizos became rural in the United State they became urban in Montréal.

Hoffman

Jean Dalpé and his wife René Lorion settled in Montréal -- they appear in the 1681 census -- and later moved across the river to Varennes. Is there anything known about why the family moved?

Parizeau

No, I don't think anything is known. Remember, these people didn't know how to write, and oral traditions aren't that precise. We don't know why they moved.

Hoffman

It is our understanding that the bones of the eight solders killed by the Iroquois [including Jean Dalpé] in the Couleé Grou skirmish in 1690 were buried initially at the cemetery at Pointe-aux-Trembles and later [according to one account] removed to Notre Dame in Montréal. Is this the case? Are you aware of another monument [in addition to the one at Couleé Grou]?

Parizeau

Only the one [monument] at the Couleé Grou. I don't think there's anything else. We never found it if there is.

Hoffman

For many generations the descendants of Jean Dalpé and René Lorion lived as habitants in Varennes and villages nearby -- along the St. Lawrence River. The family of Michel Delpé Pariseau left Varennes and in 1843 entered the United States at Rouses Point, New York. There was an upsurge in emigration of French-Canadian families to the United States beginning in about 1840. Why did these families leave?

Parizeau

There wasn't enough land. There isn't all that much good agricultural land in Québec. A good part of Québec is covered by the pre-Cambrian shield, forest and water. Very early in the 19th century a population that was increasing very rapidly just didn't find the land that was required. Furthermore, industry hadn't started yet in the towns. It would have to wait for the so-called national policy, the establishment of custom duties, after 1878 for industrial development to take place.

Those who couldn't find land around Montréal left for the United States -- most for the textile plants being put up in New England, some of them to find land. They found some in Western Canada, and I gather that Michel Delpé Pariseau went through Schenectady to good land in Wisconsin. But hundreds of thousands of Québeckers left. If there hadn't been that wave of emigration from 1840 to 1885 or 90, the total population of Québec that is today a little above 7 million would be today 12 million. It's the outcome of the emigration wave to the United States.

Hoffman

Did the Papineau Rebellion, which occurred in 1837-38, play a role? Or was it the economic factor in your view?

Parizeau

I think it was the economic factor. There weren't all that many people involved in the uprising. I've learned from you that the number of Pariseaus involved was much larger than I thought. Maybe there was some particular threat overhanging that family after the uprising and maybe it had some consequence. My feeling is that they couldn't find land. They were getting poorer and poorer. They had to find some place to work and earn a living.

Hoffman

How large is the Parizeau family in Québec and how did the many different spellings come about such as Pariseau, Parizeau with a 'z' and so on?

Parizeau

And [Pari] 'zeault' and whatever. Only in the parishes, only the priest knew how to write. Therefore, they would pronounce their names, phonetically, and the priest would cover that with a sort of fantasy that might ..... [laughs]. I mean, there are all kinds of spellings.

The family isn't all that big here. I would say just looking at the telephone book that I would be surprised if there were more than a couple hundred Parizeaus [Pariseaus, Parizeaults] in there. There is a small branch also in British Columbia -- they are cousins of mine -- that has been there since the turn of the century.

Hoffman

Is that branch the branch from which Ester Pariseau, Mother Joseph derived?

Parizeau

No, that's my [immediate] branch. The first one who went to Victoria was a great uncle of mine. He was the brother of my grandfather. I gather he was a hydrographer who decided at the turn of the century to divorce. That wasn't done. The pressure on him to move away was strong. It didn't prevent him from becoming the chief hydrographer on the Pacific coast for the Federal Government. That's the small history of the Parizeau family.

Hoffman

How important, in your view, are genealogical explorations in the contemporary world and can they help to bridge cultural and political differences?

Parizeau

Well, it's great fun. We all come from somewhere. [laughs] Look, I'm very glad, in fact titillated by the fact that I've discovered a branch of the family. It's a marvelous thing. In our own day and time there are all kinds of ways in which people can communicate. But to know that they have common ancestry, by god it's fun.

Hoffman

We would be greatly honored if you would consent to being our Guest of Honor at a family reunion in St. Paul, Minnesota, to coincide with the publication of a book about the family. Merci Monsieur Parizeau.

Parizeau

Thank you very much indeed.

Perrizo Family History Project