My father in the Moukmouk Islands | One father, many lives

Patrick Delisle-Crevier lost his mother at the age of 6. His father ? Although he only lived a few blocks away, he never really knew him. Roland D. led not a double, but a triple, even a quadruple life, which Patrick did not suspect existed until he saw a “Costco format” family arrive in his life. It is this incredible but true story that he tells in his first novel, My father in the Moukmouk Islands.

Valerie Simard
The Press

One might think Patrick Delisle-Crevier subscribed to small miracles and implausible stories. We had an appointment in front of the house where he grew up, rue Marquette, in the Villeray district, to revisit the neighborhood of his childhood. He and her husband had just parked their car there with their five dogs on board. Having inadvertently locked the doors, the keys inside the car, they were about to call a breakdown service when one of the dogs pressed a button. The doors unlocked.

There are plenty of surreal stories in Patrick Delisle-Crevier’s novel. An autobiographical novel, not fictionalized, since the facts which are told there are real. Only a few first names have been changed. “I didn’t need to add anything,” he said. It was already unreal. »

Opening

Journalist for the magazine 7 days and author of several biographies of personalities aimed at young people, Patrick Delisle-Crevier told his story and that of his family for the first time in the magazine Urbania in 2010, then as part of a television series broadcast in France. He was reluctant to reveal himself more, his family and him, on Quebec territory until we contacted him for the documentary series Double life – When the truth catches up with us which aired last fall on the Vrai platform.

It is to regain control of his story, in a way, and to tell it without constraints that he embarked on the writing of this first novel in which he revisits the milestones of his life, of his childhood with his sick mother, who died at the age of 40, then with his grandparents and in the clutches of social services, until his father’s funeral and the reunion with his many brothers and sisters years later. The story is so worthy of a movie that even before the book came out, Patrick had already received a proposal he was considering.

A father who is not in the Moukmouk Islands

As a child, Patrick saw his father a few times when he took him to eat pizza in a restaurant on rue Jarry. Then he disappeared. His grandmother used to say it in the Moukmouk Islands and Patrick believed it for a long time. When he was 12, he investigated and found him. Not in the Moukmouk Islands, but in a service station on rue Bélanger, in the neighboring district. He almost got there, but he changed his mind and turned back. “I think my quest to find him was more important than knowing him. I knew where he was, I knew if I ever needed him he was going to be there. »

He will not see him again until five years later, in the early 1990s, at his funeral. Him, and all his family, of which he knew the existence, but which he did not imagine so many.

“I had the unpleasant disadvantage of looking like my father,” he says. They were pointing at me. They made the connection right away and I felt illegitimate. Another Roland child, born to a second mistress, was also there. She had had the chance to rub shoulders with her father, whom she called “dad” in private, but “my uncle Roland” in public, especially in the presence of Roland’s other children, because several of them rubbed shoulders without really knowing the backstage of this vaudeville… or that Greek tragedy.

Even if there were injuries, for Patrick, it’s a great story. “I had a great childhood, despite the loss of my mother, despite the difference. The absence of a mother, I will always carry her. And that of a father?

“Not having a father, I’ve never missed it, a mother, yes, even every day, I still miss it,” he adds. This will also be the subject of his next book: the life he would have had with her if she had not left the world so young.

But the beauty of his story is above all in this new family he found in 2008, after his half-sister Josée contacted him on Facebook. Since their father’s funeral, they had had no contact. Then suddenly a string of brothers and sisters with whom he has forged links, for the most part, landed in his life. “My brother Denis is the father I never had; my sister Josée is my big sister. I have people who take care of me, I have an entourage. I bought a chalet because I wanted all my Delisles to be there, and then we have Delisle parties. »

And the family could still grow. Patrick recently reunited with Sébastien, a half-brother, born to another mother, with whom he had had a brief contact in high school. You are lost ? In summary, Roland Delisle had 10 known children by 4 different women. “According to my older sisters, there are others,” says Patrick. Four of them wrote to me on Facebook saying, “I think we’re brother and sister.” But how do you separate the true from the false? »

My father in the Moukmouk Islands

Patrick Delisle-Crevier

Free expression

248 pages