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Provincial Archives of New Brunswick

Dictionary of Miramichi Biography

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CASTANET, JEAN-BAPTISTE-MARIE (1766-1798)

CASTANET, JEAN-BAPTISTE-MARIE, Catholic missionary in northern New Brunswick, 1795-98; b. diocese of Rodez, France, 1766; ordained c1790; d. Quebec City, 26 Aug 1798.

Jean-Baptiste-Marie Castanet was a French Recollet priest who was exiled from France by the Revolution and came to Quebec from England in 1794. The following year he was appointed missionary priest at Caraquet, with responsibility for the Acadian settlements throughout the North Shore. In 1796 his mission field was expanded to include the Miramichi and Richibucto districts.

During his three years in New Brunswick, Castanet devoted a good deal of his time to the Micmac Indians, whose loyalties had been divided between the French and English ever since the Revolutionary War. In his History of Northern New Brunswick and the Gaspé, Robert Cooney credits him with convincing the Micmacs to abandon a plan for the "total extirpation of the people" living along the Miramichi River. While it may be doubted that such a plan ever existed, tensions between the English and the Micmacs were high in the 1790s.

Castanet fell ill with tuberculosis in the spring of 1798 and died a few months later, at age thirty-two.

Sources

[b/d] DCB / Cooney (H)


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