Jean-Robert Sansfaçon taught, wrote novels, took part in setting up new organizations, such as the Franco-Quebecois Office for Youth. But he was above all a journalist. This is the main thread of his life on the professional level.
Journalism, he set foot there first at the student newspaper of the Lionel-Groulx college, The Theresian. That’s where we met during the 1960s. We did almost full-time journalism there, publishing a weekly edition of a newspaper that wanted to be engaged.
The world of education was then effervescent. It was from Lionel-Groulx that a vast movement began in 1968 to demand free education, which spread throughout Quebec, through the occupation of CEGEPs.
These years were those of all possibilities. Driven by the Quiet Revolution and major social movements, we thought and wanted to have a role to play in the transformation of a world then in turmoil.
Like a few others, Jean-Robert preferred to invest in journalism rather than activism. The role of observer and critic of the changes taking place suited him better.
His vision, his ambition one could also say, he expressed it in an editorial published in The Theresian in April 1968. “Information and commitment,” he wrote, “are the two items that can enable human freedom. »
Here we find the essence of the values that will drive him in his career: information as a tool for raising awareness among citizens; its commitment to the transformation of society; the search for social progress and equality.
At the end of the 1970s, he wanted to take journalism off the beaten track, to give voice to trends forced into marginality by the traditional media. With a few other “madmen”, he will be on the adventure of the magazine crazy time, which will be a living laboratory of free information. The experiment will last almost six years.
After this adventure, while continuing his teaching at Cégep de Saint-Jérôme, Jean-Robert collaborated with economic magazines, including economic dutyand will sign in the pages of the newspaper a weekly chronicle on the urban life.
The invitation to join the newspaper’s editorial team in 1993 forced him to put an end to his teaching career. When I am appointed director, I will naturally invite him to become editor-in-chief of the newspaper, a position he will hold until 2009.
Being an editor is, it is often said, being the conductor. The holder of this function animates the newsroom, directs it, mobilizes it to produce the newspaper which is offered to readers every day. The challenge is daily.
A newsroom is never easy to run. There are a lot of talents there that you have to know how to channel. Jean-Robert’s form of leadership, made up of patience, listening, sensitivity, ensured that he could, with the limited resources of the To have tocontinue the transformation of this newspaper and enrich it with new columns and new notebooks.
Readers will have known Jean-Robert mainly through his editorials. From the editorial forum, he was able to defend his vision of the development of Quebec society and the deep values that animated him in terms of progress and social justice. From his profession as an economics teacher, he had retained the concern to make people understand what lies behind the major social and economic issues.
The pedagogical editorialist that he often was nevertheless knew how to bite. According to the precept bequeathed by the founder of the newspaper, he never failed to “denounce the rascal”, wherever he was. On the left as well as on the right, in the town hall as in the parliaments, in the trade unions as in the boards of directors. He did not like to see the privileged take over the common good.
What can be said of these 30 years that Jean-Robert devoted to To have to, except that, according to the consecrated formula, he has done what must. And that he did it well.