Pierre-Auguste Tardif was born in 1852 and married around 1874 to Françoise Bodet, probably in the area of Juigné-les-Moutiers in France, where he died on 5 January 1889. His burial certificate reads as follows:
On the sixth day of January one thousand eight hundred and eighty nine, the body of Pierre Tardif, husband of Marie Bodet, deceased yesterday at Haut-Breil, aged thirty-six years, has been buried by we, the undersigned priest, in the presence of Jean Esnault and François Hervé who declared they could not write.
For unknown reasons but possibly because of great poverty, Françoise Bodet was persuaded to emigrate to Canada with her six children, Jeanne, Pierre, Auguste, Jean, Alexandre et Emile, the latter being born on the 20th of April, 1889, i.e. a few months after the death of his father. It would appear that the priests of the village paid for their trip. They all arrived in Ste-Rose-du-Lac, Manitoba, around 1894. Consequently Pierre-Auguste never lived in Canada, but he is the Head of this family which came and settled here, and which has had a good number of descendants. Of the six children, three sons, Jean, Alexandre and Emile have ensured the continuity of the name Tardif which very soon became Tardiff.
The parish of Ste-Rose-du-Lac received its first colonists in 1889, where they were able to settle on good hay farmland. The Tardiff family settled on a farm west of Ste-Rose, which is still occupied to-day by Louis Tardiff. Soon three of the sons, Alexandre, Jean et Pierre, each had their own farm. All the children were married in St-Rose-du-Lac, but Jeanne and her husband Prospère Echelard, also from France, who married in Ste-Rose-du-Lac in 1894, went to Havre, Montana, and settled there where they had a store and rental accommodation. Jeanne's mother, Françoise Bodet, went to join them in May 1914 and died there on the 25th of November, 1915. One of the sons, Auguste, also went to Montana where he died in Havre in 1933.
A few years ago, Yvonne Tardiff Fitzmaurice, granddaughter of Pierre-Auguste and daughter of Alexandre, went to Havre, Montana, to find the burial place of her grandmother Françoise Bodet Tardiff. She had much difficulty even to find the family name, for her grandmother had been recorded under the name of Cardiff instead of Tardiff!. The members of the Jeanne Tardiff Echelard's family in Montana have been buried in the cemeteries of Highland or Calvary.
The descendants of Pierre-Auguste Tardif and Françoise Bodet are found for the most part in Manitoba.
