At the end of last week, I heard a number of comments and tributes about Pierre Bourgault, who died 20 years ago on June 16, 2003. The character was both controversial and adored during his lifetime. The sulfur layer has not faded two decades later. We love it or we hate it.
These shared memories stirred something in me. I worked with him, he was my mentor. I had the privilege of being one of his chosen disciples, I who did not study with him, unlike a whole generation of communicators. These past 20 years allow us to measure what has changed in this Quebec society that he loved so much. Saturday, in these screens, I spoke to you about my father1. Today, it’s my intellectual father’s turn.
With Bourgault, I cut my teeth on public radio, on Saturday afternoons, with pleasures, which will truly be a cult show of the late 1980s. Interviews, chronicles, air of the times, gossip, politics: the total freedom of tone was astonishing. I learned my job as an animator by his side, pushed, sometimes harshly, but always with friendship, by him. He also gave me his last year of radio, doing me the favor of chronicling Present indicative until the end of his life, talking about his garden and politics. The loop was complete. Between the two ; a friendship, its ups and downs, the chance to visit a part of the history of Quebec. Before I met him, he was a black and white archive for me.
Bourgault. Her flowers, her dog Beau Bonhomme, her untimely phone calls at 5 p.m., her rants, her tenderness. So he was my midwife in the media. He taught me how to do solid, respectful, but demanding interviews. Taught it to me the hard way, but with passion and generosity.
He taught me how to design shows. But, above all, to stand up. Injustice, he said, is something that comes from the belly and floods you, forces you to get up, act or speak. I saw him stand up to the management of Radio-Canada.
The first years after his death, some people asked me, about political events in Quebec: what would Pierre Bourgault have thought of it, what would he have said? I always refused to answer. It is dangerous to make the dead speak, especially since he was so surprising and atypical during his lifetime. But 20 years later, it appears as a marker of time, and its mere existence allows us to measure how times have changed.
Would it have a place in the current conversation, in Quebec society? Would he be heard? Would her voice still carry? In terms of political ideas, his intransigence would put him at odds with the CAQ, QS, even the PQ, which he would surely find too soft. In fact, he was a flame igniter, an awakener, and times have changed dramatically. Nationalism, here as elsewhere, gets a bad press, and Bourgault would be quite alone. His remarks, moderately in line with a globalized society where the purchase of local strawberries becomes in itself an extreme nationalist gesture!
The political fight of his life no longer resonates today as it did 50 years ago, and we can now wonder if he will transport a whole section of the population. Pierre was one of the most inspiring figures – and the most divisive – of a movement that is largely lacking in love. The nationalist faith is carried by a more discreet, calm, more strategic party. Bourgault would be, let’s say it politely, like an embarrassing witness…
Would it have been cancelled? In many ways, his speech – and his way of life – would blow the slider away from the ideologically acceptable positions of our 2020s. He would not hesitate to send to graze those men and women whose positions he found incoherent or incompatible with his own.
He was a radical, which is certainly part of the spirit of the times, but political correctness drove him crazy. The ambient reluctance and walking on eggshells raised to the rank of an Olympic discipline would have pissed him off.
His love of very young men would be a problem today. His inclinations would no longer be overlooked.
Bourgault belongs to a bygone era, where he was the black sheep. He … not fit was exactly nowhere, always too flamboyant, demanding, excessive. He was also a being of paradoxes. He could be terribly unfair to some people, but called for greater social justice, more solidarity. He was an apostle of freedom, but had suggested to Jacques Parizeau to temporarily restrain the press the day after a winning referendum. His nationalist discourse appears dated to some, but the man had a dazzling modernity. He was preoccupied with the running of his society, but, although very surrounded, he was alone, very alone. He was a being of paradoxes, therefore, and a star that will have transfigured the lives of many.
With all that, despite all that, he was my mentor.
Today, in the age of texting, if by chance my phone rings at 5 p.m., I shiver.