Geneviève Béland always has lines of songs in her head. It is because her social and political awakening is inseparable from the music of her adolescence. Meeting with a mother at the front for whom culture should more than ever play the role of a raft.
“I am the architect of my shipwreck,” sings Guillaume Beauregard of Vulgaires Machins in Asyluma phrase to which Geneviève Béland often returns when she tries to describe the annoying obstinacy with which people in the West are heading headlong towards the wall.
“She will never understand that protecting life is more disturbing than destroying it,” sums up her biographical notice in The last one if we lose it (Éditions du Quartz), his book of correspondence with the ecologist Henri Jacob, published last April.
To the best of her small (albeit formidable) means, the 39-year-old woman is trying to be one of the architects of our rescue. Born in La Sarre, before moving to Val-d’Or at the age of 7, Geneviève spent many of the most significant moments of her childhood in Normétal, where family reunions took place. In the name of her roots, it is to this village of less than 800 inhabitants, which was almost razed by the monster fires of the summer of 2023, that we ride with her on this rainy Saturday.
“For me, Normétal is one of the most authentic villages in Quebec,” she says, facing the old recreation hall. Then we stop for a moment in front of the church where she was baptized and where her parents were married, people of heart, but not at all a couple of activists.
“Culture has become a tool for me, it is no longer an end in itself,” explains the woman who wears several hats, including those of cultural development coordinator for the City of Val-d’Or and co-host of the brilliant podcast series When do you think?, in which she presents in each episode an editorial whose indignant thought is, once again, often guided by her tunes favorites.
Visit the podcast series website When do you think?
She also chaired the Abitibi-Témiscamingue Culture Council until last May, in addition to having helped set up the Festival de la relève indépendante musicale en Abitibi-Témiscamingue and having been the agent of Val-d’Orien singer Chantal Archambault.
“My first contact with environmental issues was through punk. I had a friend who became a vegetarian just because he listened to Propaganda. [influent groupe du Manitoba] ” she says with a laugh. “And I remember that when I was in these little shows, in church basements in Amos or Saint-Dominique-du-Rosaire, I felt really happy. That’s when I felt most alive.”
Mother at the front
After studying cultural animation, then at HEC in cultural organization management, and a few years working in the Montreal music scene, notably as a show agent for the Preste box, Geneviève Béland returned to Abitibi for good in 2012.
She had always, in her own way, been sensitive to the fate of the planet, but the advent in 2020 of the climate emergency movement Mothers on the Frontline and the mobilization to have the Horne Foundry comply with provincial arsenic emissions standards will have finished converting her into a true activist. The kind to not only take to the streets, but also to speak out during public consultations and other consultations of the Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement.
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
Geneviève Béland returned to Abitibi for good in 2012.
Mothers at the Front came to free me from complexes. Before, it was as if I had the impression that the environmental cause belonged to scientists, that I had to know everything about carbon encapsulation data. Mothers at the Front legitimized the place that I could take, as a mother.
Genevieve Béland
Under her hat as cultural development coordinator for the City of Val-d’Or, Geneviève Béland is currently working on the revitalization of its downtown area, through a project called Les avenues d’la 3. While this project was initially born out of the need to rebuild the storm, sewer and water supply network, she also saw it as an opportunity to strengthen the social fabric through a program of activities and shows.
“In Val-d’Or, parking spaces and homelessness have created a lot of tension,” she points out, which is reminiscent of another Quebec city, further south, whose name rhymes with Normétal.
“And culture helps us realize that even if we don’t always agree on the means, everyone wants a lively city center, with a healthy social mix and good relationships. It’s like that everywhere: we get exhausted in the details, without focusing on the common denominators.”
Destroying the dogma
Last April, Geneviève Béland published The last one if we lose it (Éditions du Quartz), a book of correspondence with Henri Jacob, “the slightly slobbery environmentalist”, according to the words of our colleague Philippe Mercure. The co-founder of Action boréale and great friend of Richard Desjardins discusses with his younger sister the future of the planet, but first and foremost that of their corner of the country.
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
Geneviève Béland with her friend and co-author of The last one if we lose it, Henry Jacob
One of her most enlightening passages concerns the sponsorships of mining companies, whose names (Glencore, Agnico Eagle) adorn stages, banners and even arenas almost everywhere in Abitibi. “Social acceptability is always a question of perception,” observes the woman who, in fact, is finishing a master’s degree in social acceptability.
The last one if we lose it
Quartz Editions
100 pages
When we see the name of the mining companies on all the buildings, we say to ourselves: “Crime, if they weren’t there, we wouldn’t have an arena.” The truth is, we would have one anyway. These discussions create social divides, which is what makes it difficult to talk about them. People don’t want to fall out with friends or family members.
Genevieve Béland
“But at the same time,” she continues, “the housing crisis, which is partly linked to the mining industry, is not associated with mining. It is rare that we calculate what these industries cost us socially and environmentally.”
Cautious hope
How is Geneviève Béland’s hope? “Right now, my hope is a little tired.” A motocross bike passes by on Rue Commerciale in Normétal. “I find it absurd that being an environmentalist is seen as something disturbing, radical, when we’re just trying to save humanity from the problems it created itself.”
“I know there are people who found our title a bit fatalistic,” she says of the The last one if we lose it. “At the same time, I feel that if we artificially inflate our hope, we will go back to our business and do nothing.”
The truth is that when she thinks about it for two minutes, conscious and lucid, Geneviève Béland tells herself that it is complicated, but possible. She draws part of the courage not to give up from the look on her 10 and 12 year old sons’ faces, as well as from immersing herself in the invigorating, euphoric energy of music. She raises her glass to all the artists who continue to travel to her region despite reduced profit prospects.
“Cultural vitality is often measured in flamboyance,” she observes, naming events with national impact such as the Abitibi-Témiscamingue International Film Festival or the Emerging Music Festival. “But culture is sometimes experienced in a more confidential, more community-based way. When we transpose culture too much into economic, quantitative logic, it all loses meaning.”
Geneviève tells me about the last visit to Val-d’Or of one of the most promising newcomers of Quebec song, Ariane Roy. “Listen, there were maybe twenty of us in the room and, between two songs, Ariane, in a way that was not at all contemptuous or bitter, made reference to the fact that there weren’t many of us. And there was a spectator who shouted: Yeah, but we’re here.”