Baie-Saint-Paul is used to beauty, but it was rather the ugliness of a raging climate that hit her on Monday. Humberto Pinochet, one of the illustrious painters of Charlevoix, lost everything in the flooding of his studio. Portrait of a deluge that devastated not only a municipality, but also the old age of a man who now fears having to cast off.
Saturday morning, Humberto Pinochet cradled his little girl in the living room of his house located in the heart of Baie-Saint-Paul. In the photos he shows at Duty, with a heavy heart, we see the grandfather and the child with broad smiles, their silhouette cut out by the sun which floods the room. “We were good, we were listening to good music. It was a morning of happiness,” recalls the painter.
There are now only memories of these moments of bliss spent with the family. On Monday, the Gouffre river, which winds around the house – it is clearly visible through the living room window – devastated the house, tearing off entire sections of walls, flooding the studio where the artist piled up 67 years of memories. and drowning the comfort of his old age to project his old days out to sea, without a home base.
“I’ve lost everything,” sighs the painter as he walks through the decor of his life now stained with mud. The devastation reached every room, the water swallowed everything that was less than a meter and a half from the ground. The canvases, the sketches, the cameras, the photos, the easels, the sculptures: everything is now lying around pell-mell. Ruin.
Drowned memories
This life built one brushstroke at a time, nature took only a few hours to destroy it. Tuesday, at the end of the day, the artist got down to saving a few paintings with friends. Even if the material is of little importance to him, he says, the mourning of the past memories between the walls of his house – and, above all, that of those that remained to be done – hurts his soul.
“It was a party place, here, the place of meetings between friends”, explains his son, Emmanuel Pinochet, slipping a canvas in the trailer of his truck. “It is happiness and the beauty of life that were celebrated in this house. Now, he adds after a pause, it’s over. »
Humberto Pinochet had placed hospitality at the heart of his home. In the courtyard, he had built a bar, his “Barracuda”, where he and friends celebrated the arrival of spring barely two weeks ago. The counter, destroyed by the flood, is now at the neighbour’s. Inside, the room dedicated to friends had a name, “The Consulate”. A large table suitable for welcoming guests sat enthroned in the middle of the dining room.
In a niche near the ceiling, behind a small Plexiglas panel, still appears the bust of a Roman emperor buried up to the chin under the cork. “It’s a work called The Burial of Julius Caesar, explains Mr. Pinochet. Every time we got together in good company and uncorked a bottle of wine, we threw the cork here. It’s all over,” he sighs, looking around the room.
Leaving in spite of himself
Humberto Pinochet repeats, while visiting the upside-down rooms of his house, that “there is worse in life. The painter speaks with knowledge: he and his parents fled his native Chile and the junta in power in 1977 to immigrate to Quebec “with $300 in his pocket”.
His late mother, also an artist, is buried in a cemetery in Les Éboulements. “All my life is in this region,” says the painter with a southern accent that has never left him despite spending half a century in Quebec. “I even have a place waiting for me next to her. Now, I don’t know if I will be able to stay in Charlevoix. »
The painter fears having to leave the village where he has rooted his life. “The price of houses has skyrocketed,” he laments with discouragement. I’m a painter, me: I’m not able to buy a new home to put my brushes. I will probably have to leave Baie-Saint-Paul. I do not know. »
The village would take the loss of a painter who makes it shine internationally. Humberto Pinochet has exhibited his paintings all over the world, in China as well as in Latin America. “I had become a sort of ambassador for the region,” says the painter, who has just published a book of photographs showing the beauty of Charlevoix. “I received international journalists, I introduced them to the region. I have always tried to give back to the community here, it was at the heart of my life. »
A paradise turned into a hell
The artist tries to remain positive by walking through the remains of his house, hoping to find, with his partner, “a new place to love each other”. His drama to him appears very modest compared to the hours of anguish experienced by the families of the two firefighters who tragically disappeared, he confides.
“It’s not easy,” he repeats, however. He, at least, can rely on friends and on a career that has broken him down to trials and upheavals. “Other disaster victims may not have the same mental makeup as me. It’s really tragic, what we’re going through right now. »
In the devastated workshop, a friend of Humberto Pinochet goes back and forth to put paintings under cover. These paintings form the still intact vestiges of a work built over 40 years. “It was a paradise here. Now heaven has become hell,” she says, stepping over a muddy chair that has fallen over.