Bruno Marchand’s roots

An only child who grew up in a working-class neighborhood. A long illness that took away her mother and “transformed” her way of seeing life. Where does Bruno Marchand come from, the man who came out of nowhere to become mayor of Quebec’s second city? To understand, Press met him in front of his childhood home.

Gabriel Beland
Press

(Quebec) In a small street in the Limoilou district, a white-haired couple approach Bruno Marchand with a smile. They want to congratulate the new mayor.

“I grew up here, you know? », Replied Mr. Marchand, before starting a conversation.

At his side, his press officer remarks that “it hardly happened a week ago to be recognized in the street”.

And yet, here is the man who took the oath this Sunday to become the 38^e mayor of Quebec. The last time a lower-town-born mayor took power was Lucien Borne in 1938.

It may seem trivial, especially since he now lives in Sainte-Foy. But to understand Bruno Marchand, a funny political animal capable of talking about social exclusion and effective management in the same sentence, you have to understand where he comes from.

“I was born in a very different Limoilou. It’s gentrified now. But here, there were a lot of people who pulled it out, ”remembers the 49-year-old father, waving his hand, as if to designate the whole little universe of his childhood.

His father was a traveling salesman, set off in the car full of clothes for long tours of Quebec. Her mother was a “housewife”. She was the mainstay of the family.

In the street, children of civil servants, but also the sons of immigrants, of blue collar workers. Two neighbors had lost their father. Bruno Marchand says he saw things at this age that will mark him forever.

“In the neighborhood, there were people who did not eat three meals a day,” he says.

Then there was this activity at his elementary school which consisted, at regular intervals, of exchanging students’ lunches. “It was before the invention of allergies,” jokes Bruno Marchand.

Finding their nose in another child’s lunch, some suddenly realized their privilege, and the bad luck of others. The sandwiches speak …

He himself then studied at a private college in the upper town. It was his godmother who paid the bill.

“I don’t know if my parents would have been able to pay me that. I was never told, but I think there was the intention to put me in a framed environment to prevent me from getting lost, ”said the one who was overflowing with energy as a child.

“Budgetary discipline”

But Choquette Avenue was also hockey games with friends. Sport marked Bruno Marchand. He is a seasoned cyclist. He also runs between 1300 and 1500 km per year.

His brilliantly colored running shoes, which he dragged on his feet throughout the election campaign, have also captured the imagination.

Bruno Marchand left home at the turn of his twenties. He studied philosophy at Laval University and social work technique at Cégep de Sainte-Foy.

He then went to work in this CEGEP, then at the Suicide Prevention Center, before becoming CEO of Centraide Quebec.

This man from a community background describes himself as a centrist. Talking with him sometimes feels like talking to Amir Khadir, other times to a business manager.

Then suddenly, he cites the work of epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett who “have shown that wherever you do not work inequalities, where you allow them to increase, we all lose, not just the poor”.

This idea forged his own of the city. He also promised during the campaign to work on “zero homelessness”.

“We don’t want to live in a city with broken bottles on the fences to put distance between the other and me,” illustrates this father of two children aged 16 and 20.

“There are two parts to me. There is this idea that a rigorous government is a government that can restore confidence in the fact that the money that we pool, we know that it is well managed. So people are ready to do it.

“You have to be good. But you have to be good so that afterwards you can take care of the world, weave the social net, offer opportunities. ”

The Allegory of the Samaras

Much has been made in recent weeks of its ability to rally people. Marchand won over both Radio X hosts and progressive voters in central neighborhoods.

His party, Quebec strong and proud, was created from scratch at the end of last winter around former members of the Parti Québécois and the Bloc. But one of his candidates came from the CAQ. “There were also several liberals,” insists Marchand, who speaks of a rainbow movement.

His ability to rally certainly also comes from his charisma. His press officer, Thomas Gaudreault, formerly of the PQ, remembers the moment when Bruno Marchand surveyed him to work for him.

“I had never heard of Bruno. He was at 1% in the polls. We went for a walk to discuss all of this. ”

Was Mr. Gaudreault going to quit his job at the Quebec Chamber of Commerce and Industry to jump into a vacuum? He chose to take the leap.

And now Marchand, against all odds, has won. In the last days, he thought a lot about his parents. His father “started from nothing”, “who succeeded in [lui] give more than he received ”, died in 2007.

Her mother died in 2013. She suffered from Alzheimer’s. For six years, this only son accompanied her as best he could. He saw this woman so upright, her “moral pillar”, her “base”, wither away. These six years “transformed [sa] life ”, gave him another perspective of human relations.

“It taught me that it’s not true that a human relationship, it can only be something that progresses. There can be a significant human relationship in something that regresses. ”

These days, he often thinks of an anecdote about his mother and her vision of living together. In front of his childhood home stands, even today, a huge maple tree. When the samaras fell in the spring, she struggled to pick them up as far as the sidewalk and in the street.

“The neighbor would go out every year to tell her: ‘Don’t do that, Thérèse, the City is going to do it!’ », Remembers Bruno Marchand.

“She would answer him: ‘The city is me.’ ”