1939-2023 | Guy Latraverse is no more

Guy Latraverse, one of the great builders of the Quebec recording and entertainment industry, died Saturday evening following a long illness. He had been hospitalized for a month. The famous impresario and producer was 84 years old. The news was confirmed at The Press by his daughter Zoé, Sunday afternoon.

Guy Latraverse was born on July 5, 1939 in Chicoutimi. He was the eldest of a family of four children and was a year older than his sister Louise, actress, author and director thanks to whom he set foot in the artistic world.

Involved since college in the organization of sporting and cultural activities, he took his first steps as a professional manager when Claude Léveillée, then his sister’s lover, asked him to take care of his accounting at the turn of the years. 1960. Quickly recruited by other artists little interested in numbers, Guy Latraverse gained further ground in 1962 when, after having led a negotiation for the benefit of the author of Frederickthe latter declared that he would henceforth be his impresario.

“Impresario. I didn’t know what the word meant exactly, confides the producer in Guy Latraverse, 50 years of Quebec showbiz, biographical book published in 2013. To my knowledge, no one had this title in Montreal. »

The “father of showbiz”

Guy Latraverse is at the forefront of the cultural revival that animated Quebec from the 1960s: in addition to Claude Léveillée, for whom he organizes Quebec tours, he works in particular with Pierre Calvé, Pauline Julien, Jacques Blanchet, Jean-Pierre Ferland and will be, from the 1970s, the man behind the exceptional career of Yvon Deschamps. He also extended his activities to Europe and orchestrated the visits to Quebec of artists such as Guy Béart, Léo Ferré, Petula Clark and Charles Aznavour.

We do not say that Guy Latraverse is the “father of Quebec showbiz” lightly. He was, with Gilles Talbot and Gérard Thibault, one of its great builders. As well as having been involved in just about every major show of the 1970s (The Osstidcho, I saw the wolf, the fox, the lion, 1 time 5that of Offenbach at the Saint-Joseph oratory, etc.), he is one of the founders of ADISQ, co-founder of the Francos and was in one way or another behind all the televised galas intended to reward the artisans of Quebec culture, from music to cinema, including theater and humor.

Ideas of grandeur

His journey is marked by ideas of grandeur. He convinced Claude Léveillée to do the Place des Arts in 1964 when no local artist had yet performed alone as a headliner. He is the man behind Yvon Deschamps’ 100 evenings at the Théâtre Maisonneuve in 1977. He is also the fearless producer who presented Diane Dufresne at the 1980 Forum – the first local artist to perform there solo – and the one who made his show possible Pink magic at the Olympic Stadium four years later. No other local artist has dared such a thing since.

However, his career was marked by several failures. Some of his projects (notably the presentation of the show Yellow or… by Jean-Pierre Ferland at the Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier) pushed him into bankruptcy. Three times rather than one. He always got over it, sometimes establishing himself in the field of records (Kébec Disques) or television (Sogestalt, Productions Samedi de Rire) and, always, in entertainment.

Guy Latraverse paradoxically drew his courage and energy from an illness that also deeply undermined him: in the mid-1980s, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. “There wasn’t much that stood in my way in this profession. I was a good bipolar person who was really successful, he said with a laugh, during an interview with The Press in 2013. This illness allowed me to do things just as it allowed Churchill, Roosevelt and Napoleon, all bipolar, to do business that they would never have done. »

Social engagement

He was also one of the first Quebec personalities to speak publicly about bipolarity and to commit to mental health. Guy Latraverse is in fact one of the founders of an association which is today called Relief (formerly Revivre) and which offers support to people suffering from anxiety, depression and bipolarity. His social commitment was also demonstrated through benefit shows such as All united against AIDS And In concert with Saguenayboth held in 1996.

A year before founding the FrancoFolies de Montréal (which became simply the Francos) with Alain Simard, Guy Latraverse received the Félix tribute in 1988. A reward that particularly touched him. “This evening was one of the great moments of my life because this tribute came from my peers, people who had appreciated what I had done for the Quebec entertainment industry, our business,” he says in the biographical book written with the help of the ex-journalist of The Press Daniel Lemay.

His career has been marked by a number of prizes and distinctions awarded both by public authorities and associations of television, music and entertainment professionals. His pillar character was recognized a second time by ADISQ which, in 2013, awarded him a special Félix tribute for his 50 years spent working in the shadows to promote local artists and culture.