Those who bring culture to life, everywhere in Quebec | A radiant cultural offering

(Saint-Casimir) Less than 10 years ago, this village of just under 1,500 inhabitants was perfectly anonymous, except perhaps for its improbable “Bateau de la Vierge,” a concrete spur in the shape of a ship’s prow jutting out into the Sainte-Anne River. That was before the return to the village of young people driven by a microbrewery project, associated from the start with a cultural offering that now shines well beyond the Portneuf region.

Maxime Naud-Denis and his friends were brewing beer in the basement of a rented house in Grondines when the old Saint-Casimir cinema came up for sale in 2016. Too big for their initial brewing needs – they have since expanded twice – the place was nevertheless tailor-made for presenting shows, especially since Daniel, the father of his partners Mathieu and Philippe Tessier, occasionally hosted artists in the neighboring tavern.

“When Dan was lucky enough to have artists who were too big for his tavern, like Lisa LeBlanc or Bodh’aktan at the time, we put them in the big room. That allowed us to pay the electricity and the brewery bills,” explains Maxime Naud-Denis.

The venue, which can accommodate 450 spectators on the microbrewery floor, has since seen almost all of Quebec’s renowned artists pass through, as well as a handful of Canadian and international groups such as Cat Empire, Basia Bulat, Tiken Jah Fakoly and the Sheepdogs. That’s without counting Commission B, the flagship event of the Grands Bois, which takes place every year in mid-June and which, over three days, features increasingly extensive programming — this year, Marjo, Karkwa, Klô Pelgag, Les Hôtesses d’Hilaire, Grimskunk and even the cult American group The Budos Band were there.

“We’re right in the middle of the village, but everyone is super cool. Marie lives there, and she always comes to thank us on Sundays for bringing some color into her life,” Maxime tells us, showing us a house whose balcony offers a bird’s eye view of the festival’s two main stages — there’s also a small jazz stage in the park set up a few years ago by the team at the riverside brasserie.

While organizing shows initially helped support brewing operations, it is the success of the microbrewery that today allows the Grands Bois team to offer a bold and diverse program.

“We are associated with a lucrative business that operates 365 days a year,” acknowledges the general manager of the microbrewery. “It is a strong appeal product, both agri-food and tourism, which stabilizes us, strengthens us, and gives us an independence that few people have in the cultural sector.”

Healthy Fridays

This resulted in the creation of Grands Bois — Arts et spectacles. In addition to the usual indoor programming and Commission B, the non-profit organization set up Fridays healthy three years ago, a weekly public market that also features emerging artists. “It’s a 5 to 7 with local producers’ booths and a free show,” Maxime Naud-Denis tells us. “With the pandemic, there was a lot of funding for this type of activity. We were able to bring in Ariane Roy, Qualité Motel and a lot of great names that we were able to see for free. This year, we’re focusing on female artists, and not just in music. We’re going to host dance projects in particular. You know, selling a contemporary dance show in Saint-Casimir is difficult…”

But it is a diversity desired by Les Grands Bois: “There are people from different backgrounds who come, farmers who come to the market, who talk to people visiting from Montreal, illustrates the young entrepreneur. These people meet, or at least rub shoulders, and I think that represents a victory against the intolerance that is growing in our society.”

Youth center

This effort does not stop at music or dance. Since the beginning of Commission B, we have always shown initiative to attract families, which led to the creation of a youth center that now reaches thousands of schoolchildren from the MRCs of Portneuf, Mékinac and Les Chenaux.

“In 2022, we brought a show for young audiences indoors to see if it would work with schools in the region,” says Chloé Zollman, coordinator at Grands Bois — Arts et spectacles. “It was a puppet show that we presented during the Vendredis sains; we ended up doing 10 school performances indoors, 1,133 students came by. You should know that the primary school population in Portneuf is 4,000 students; so a quarter of the school population of Portneuf came to Grands Bois!”

Building on this great success, the youth center of Grands Bois — Arts et spectacles has joined forces with five youth companies from Saguenay, Quebec and Montreal, taking on the role of dissemination manager in the region.

“Not all youth companies can afford to do this kind of work,” says the woman who is also responsible for programming Healthy Fridays.

“We are still here in a relatively disadvantaged environment, with cultural offerings that are not very varied, especially for young people,” continues Chloé Zollman. “We are far from many things and so we try to create encounters so that young people can develop their artistic curiosity, so that they can develop a habit of art, a taste for art.”

Cine-cool St-Caz

Les Grands Bois had long toyed with the idea of ​​returning the building, built in 1946, to its original purpose. Since the performance hall was already equipped with the projection equipment used by the previous owners, the idea was to find a way to put cinema back on screen. The trigger came from Laura Bergeron, a director, screenwriter and editor who came to recharge her batteries at a market gardener friend’s house after 10 years in Toronto. She became the curator of Ciné-cool St-Caz, which presents monthly programs of feature-length and short films from fall to spring, always followed by discussions — last year, she even invited director Stéphane Lafleur to come and present his film Viking to the public of Saint-Casimir.

“For programming, I really try to please everyone,” Laura Bergeron tells us. “I offer both documentary and fiction, but there is also experimental.”

The young woman says that the public really appreciated the experience. “It’s important that it can happen in the regions. It’s not because we’re going to settle in the countryside and adopt a more relaxed lifestyle that we want to isolate ourselves from culture!”