His sweeping positions and his unparalleled sense of repartee made him a star in the early 2000s, but today Stéphane Gendron is making an act of contrition. In an essay published this week, the former mayor of Huntingdon denounces the Quebec media’s penchant for trash, yet at the origin of its rapid rise in the media. The fruit of a long introspection for the ex-polemicist, who has completely changed his life in recent years.
An angry man, is the title of this new book which offers “reflections on trash and hatred in the public space”. This anger, which he talks about at length, inhabits him much less today, especially since he retired to his land near the American border, where he devotes himself to agriculture.
Away from the world of the media, Stéphane Gendron is not embittered. Those who expect a heavy book on “junk radio” and its headliners will be disappointed. An angry man is above all a very personal reflection on a life of violence and aggressiveness that contributed to the media monster that we experienced almost twenty years ago.
“This is not an exercise in white washing to return under spotlight. I’m still in the media: I write books, I do documentaries, and I like it. But having a microphone every day to give my opinions: never again. How do you want in 2022 to have an opinion on everything? If there is a return, it will not be that, ”adds Stéphane Gendron, who does not, however, rule out returning to politics, nearly ten years after leaving the town hall of Huntingdon. Defending himself from wanting to profit from the release of the book, the former maverick indicates that it was Quebecor, which owns the Éditions de l’homme, who contacted him to write about the trash following her participation last year in the Freedom of Oppression collective launched by Quebec Solidaire MNA Catherine Dorion.
skids
Nothing in Stéphane Gendron’s career predestined him to become a close friend of Québec solidaire, a party for which he even thought of being a candidate in the last election. The former radio host grew up in a modest family in Saint-Rémi, on the South Shore, “raised with kicks in the ass” in a toxic climate, where racism and hatred of the other were omnipresent. . A violence that he will cultivate for a good part of his life. First during his studies in history, then in law, during which he actively campaigned for the Parti Québécois, before turning right and turning his back on nationalism.
Finally in 2003, he was elected mayor of Huntingdon, a small town in Montérégie with just over 2,000 inhabitants then hit hard by industrial devitalization, which caused all sorts of social problems in the community. To prevent juvenile delinquency, the new mayor puts in place a curfew, 17 years before the pandemic.
The measure will never be applied, but it has the merit of being talked about across Quebec. Stéphane Gendron becomes the darling of TV shows for his provocative side. TQS offers him to co-host a public affairs program with his childhood idol, Gilles Proulx: The Lawyer and the Devil. At the same time, the 98.5 entrusts him with its homecoming program with the evocative title, Curfewwhere he enjoys the role of the defender of the widow and the orphan, even if it means making controversial, even downright sulphurous remarks.
“I thought I was doing committed radio, but I was doing rabid radio. That’s what I had as a model since my childhood. I lost track of what I was saying. I was fueled by aggression, it was like my cocaine, ”confesses Stéphane Gendron, who bitterly regrets his many skids on the air, which by force of circumstance have become cult moments.
In July 2005, he called Premier Jean Charest a “murderer” following a call from a listener with breast cancer who criticized the Quebec government for delaying approval of a promising drug. He also goes so far as to qualify a judge as “cursed thick” for having shortened the sentence of the infamous pedophile Luc X. This declaration will earn him a summons in September 2006 by the Bar, but Stéphane Gendron ignores it and mimes during his broadcast the gesture of wiping his behind with the letter from the disciplinary committee. His boss at TQS qualifies this segment, however very childish, as “the best moment of TV he has seen in his life”.
In December of the same year, Stéphane Gendron pushes the cork even further by setting fire to the procedure of the Bar. This time, this is too much. Within a few months, TQS and 98.5 let him go. He is disbarred from the Bar. A long slump ensues.
“The way I was on screen was also how I was in my life. I was not a character. Today, I have fortunately lost this messianic approach of wanting to break down the wall. I got rid of that through therapy. I now know where I come from. I no longer have a lightning rod,” he explains.
Change of direction
The documentary Die in 2016, in which he confronts his fear of death, was also a decisive moment in his journey. However, the public of the radio of Quebec did not buy Stéphane Gendron more on the left, less incendiary. His brief return to the airwaves of Énergie in the nation’s capital came to an abrupt end in 2018.
Too bad, he prefers to put his energies into his fight for rurality. In 2020, he gave birth to the documentary Distress at the end of the row on the harsh reality of farmers in Quebec. In the same vein, the former headliner of Mouton noir de la télé (TQS) published her first essay last June. Rapailler our territories, where he worries about the huge gap that is being created between the major centers and the regions. The cleavage between outlying territories, which are turning to the right, and cities, increasingly to the left, will also continue to grow in Quebec, he warns, citing the American example.
“In my book, I talk a lot about the trash right, because that’s what I know. But there is also the trash of the left, which expresses itself through political correctness. There are subjects that we can no longer talk about. Me, I’m worried about this bipolarization between the trash left and right. We have to find ways to talk to each other, ”drops Stéphane Gendron.
The former mayor of Huntingdon could very well have taken advantage of this resentment in the outskirts to pose as a kind of Quebec Trump before Trump. He was also approached at a certain time to take the lead of the late ADQ. But Stéphane Gendron preferred to make amends to rebuild bridges.