Jean PARADIS
Biography

PARADIS, JEAN, sea captain; b. 22 July 1658 at Quebec, son of Pierre Paradis, cutler, and of Barbe Guyon; d. before 1725 at La Rochelle, where he had settled.

After studying at the Jesuit college in Quebec Jean Paradis followed the courses given by Martin Boutet*, the king’s hydrographer, in the same town. In July 1678 he bought for 1,200 livres the two houses of Jean Talon* situated in Rue Buade at Quebec, and bounded at the back “by the Place d’Armes of the Château Saint-Louis.” Louis Rouer* de Villeray acted in this instance as proxy for Talon, who had returned to France.

There is no doubt that this is the Jean Paradis who commanded the Sainte-Anne, which was wrecked on the reefs of the Manicouagan River in the autumn of 1704; the intendant, Jacques Raudot, ordered the sale of the wreckage of this ship in October 1705. It was also Jean Paradis who, sailing from La Rochelle in 1711 at the helm of the Neptune, was intercepted by Admiral Walker and forced to pilot his ship the Edgar. We know the disaster that resulted for the English fleet off Île-aux-Oeufs. Some historians have accused the pilot Paradis of treachery on this occasion. Was he really a traitor? He would then have deserved the disdainful remark made by Admiral Walker to Colonel Samuel Vetch: “I thanck you for your caution concerning the French Pilot, but I never intended to trust him any farther then I could throw him.”

Two years later, in 1713, Jean Paradis, captain of the Phénix bound for the West Indies, was recruiting indentured workers for that colony. In 1720 an order issued by Michel Bégon* declared right and proper the seizure by Étienne Amiot de Lincourt, one of the guards of the Domaine d’Occident, of spirits smuggled by Jean Paradis, captain of the Généreuse.

Jean Paradis died before 1725. He had settled at La Rochelle, where on 8 June 1693 he had married Catherine Batailler, daughter of Pierre Batailler, a deceased sea captain, and of Angélique Roy. They had eight children, one being a son whose first name was also Jean and who was a ship’s pilot like his father and his maternal grandfather.

Roland-J. Auger

Dictionary of Canadian Biography, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003

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