This summer, The duty explores the heritage of different places that have triggered the blossoming of talent here, and sometimes elsewhere, and given wings to a host of artists. Performance halls, studios and workshops. Stories of places that have allowed the creation and dissemination of exceptional works, and that still do. First stop: the Cabaret of the Last Chance.
Its sign stands out in the sky of Rouyn-Noranda, a hundred meters before the gaze plunges into the open bowels of the Horne foundry. On the wooden panel, hoisted there at the opening, in 1982, we read “Cabaret of the last chance”. It’s the name of a novel by Jack London. Outside, a terrace welcomes passers-by at the end of May. Inside, a small stage, round tables, a pool table, posters of the crazy parties that took place here and a piano: that of Richard Desjardins.
We are in Noranda, Rouyn’s twin, on the other shore of Lake Osisko. Founded 40 years ago by a group of ten dreamers, the Cabaret de la dernier chance immediately made its mark as an essential pillar of the cultural life of Rouyn-Noranda. Michel Rivard performs there three consecutive nights, like Richard Séguin, Raymond Lévesque and the blues man John Hammond.
In 1984, Richard Desjardins, back in his hometown after the dissolution of his group Abbittibbi, gave his first solo show there. The parents of journalist Émilie Parent-Bouchard, herself from Rouyn, were present at the launch of her first solo album. His aunt, who then frequented the Cabaret, remembers having bought poems from Richard Desjardins to finance the production of this album.
The Notre-Dame district of Noranda is the neighborhood of the youth of Desjardins, who grew up there watching the clouds of arsenic escape from the long smokestacks of the foundry.
” Just in front [du Cabaret], where the Belisle store is today, on the second floor, is where I took my first piano lesson. I was nine years old », he told Radio-Canada in 2017.
“Our Little New York”
Over the years, the Cabaret has become a crossroads of cultural life, “our little New York”, said one of the founders, Lise Pichette, to Radio-Canada. The place offered, and still offers, shows all year round. The theater group Les Zybrides notably stages the texts of Jeanne-Mance Delisle. It is a place where we present debates. In 1984, Les Zybrides put on the play The great cadence, which criticizes environmental pollution linked to industrial development. From 1996 to 2006, the Nights of Poetry followed one another there, fueled by local fanzines, Catharsis And Order. “It was total, complete expression,” recalls Sonia Cotten, a poet from the region. “The Last Chance Cabaret was our headquarters,” she says.
Alex Dallaire bought the Cabaret three years ago, with two partners, from Marcel-Yves Bégin, who was part of the gang starting point and who held the reins for more than 35 years.
“We didn’t want the place to die,” says Alex Dallaire. I had never thought of buying a bar in my life, but just for the culture in Rouyn, it was worth it. It’s a big piece. The Cabaret is one of the hosts of the Emerging Music Festival in Abitibi-Témiscamingue. It still happens, says the new owner, that Desjardins comes to play on the piano he left there. “There are many big artists who have passed here, and many Quebec artists who made their debut there: Dan Bigras, Lara Fabian,” he says.
In the shadow of the foundry, in the perpetual hum of its ovens, social criticism still fuses on the narrow stage of the Cabaret, while the controversy has resumed even more vigorously around the arsenic fumes from the Horne company, disproportionate by provincial standards.
Art in sensitive area
This year, the Cabaret de la dernier chance celebrates its fortieth anniversary. For the occasion, it hosted, among other things, a Night of Poetry, during the last Abitibi-Témiscamingue Book Fair, at the end of May. “For the 40th anniversary of the Cabaret, they asked us if we could wink and hold a new Poetry Night”, says Sonia Cotten. This time the event was titled Sensitive area.
And on the small stage, militant words took flight again, opposing, among other things, the relocation of an entire neighborhood of houses to create a “buffer zone” that would allow the foundry to continue launching its nanograms into the sky. of arsenic more than five times higher than Quebec standards. Poetry confronts reality.
“I come from here. I am used to. It’s been going on for a long time, says Cabaret owner Alex Dallaire. At least we’re not affected by the fact that they want to deport houses to create a buffer zone. »
Journalist Émilie Parent-Bouchard lives in this area, a few houses further. She has already met with representatives of the Ministry of Municipal Affairs to implement her relocation. “They made things better, but they should speed things up to make them even better,” she said. I think it would cost them more to shut down the site than to comply with the standards. In all, 600 good jobs are at stake, for a population of some 40,000 inhabitants.
In his song And I slept in my chariot, Richard Desjardins was already warning us against the destructive power of the foundry on Rouyn. “I hear the foundry rushing / For those who don’t know / They burn the rock there / And tons of good guys / The big chimneys / Eternal as hell / When the gas caught me / Chu v ‘nu all upside down / Do you hear the rumor / The law of company? / You will have to die / If you want to live, my friend. »
At the end of the Night of Poetry in 2023, the poet Philippe Marquis declaimed his own opposition to the solutions proposed by the Foundry. “It can’t be a buffer zone / Nothing stops the dirty rain from… falling from the skies / Crossing the air / To fall on earth / Nothing stops the children from swallowing the flakes. »