We hadn’t forgotten her, but almost. Now Catherine Dorion, after disappearing from the political scene, is in the news again these days, and it’s shocking. As an assumed irreverent devotee, the former member of Quebec Solidaire persists and signs, and takes up her pen headlong.
“I know it’s going to explode,” she confides, met on this Monday when her books arrived in bookstores. Hotheads, punk hope notebookswhere she looks back on her, to say the least, eventful time in the National Assembly, from 2018 to 2022. A sort of story from her dreams to the raw reality, where she sometimes quotes Gérald Godin, sometimes Pierre Bourgault, everything goes: from her great hopes as a united MP to the “vacuity” of parliamentary protocol activities, including her party, which according to her has done everything to “smooth” it (stories of tuque and hoodies included).
She obviously returns to her relationship with the media, which orchestrates in Quebec and in parliamentary politics, in particular, a clever game of “reality TV”, with “shocking declarations” and other “uninterrupted trains of nonsense”, as she says.
Catherine Dorion also does not spare the party spokesperson, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, with whom she maintains lukewarm relations, to say the least, in her blunt account.
The leaderless party is on the way to becoming a party where the influence of a single man is both infinitely real and infinitely taboo.
Quote from Hotheads, punk hope notebooksby Catherine Dorion
The author knows it, her prose, as committed as ever, is unlikely to achieve unanimous approval. ” I am used to. I know what a storm is,” says the one who has actually seen others, responding with frankness and emotion to all our questions, which, given the current situation, do not initially relate so much to her essay. than on this famous anticipated “storm”. “I’m zen,” she says, smiling gently, over a coffee and a croissant.
” Personal diary “
To all her detractors, starting with Louis-Philippe Boulianne, party attaché in Quebec, who published a long reply on social networks on Sunday, Catherine Dorion retorts: “My book is like a diary, obviously there is things that do not correspond to the experiences of others. That’s my feeling. And I care. It is important that these feelings exist, that words are released, that this discomfort is highlighted. »
Like couples’ conflicts, she continues, “that’s how conversion breaks out. The goal remains to say: can we have a fundamental discussion? »
And in the case that concerns us, and that concerns Catherine Dorion to the depths of her guts, the question remains: “What strategy should the left prioritize to put the elites in their place and give power back to the people?” »
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
Catherine Dorion
Do we want to continue with the strategy that I call the good student, or opt for the strategy of punk hope, and reawaken irreverence?
Catherine Dorion
In other words: “Can we hope to lead our world toward change without changing how we do things?” »
To all those who wonder, in light of her many disillusionments, why the hell Catherine Dorion wanted to be a deputy, she answers: “As a deputy, you have a representative role. […] I wanted to represent the people, with force, with ideas, emotion and irreverence, she said, weighing each of her words. And I took this role of representation very seriously. »
To this end, Catherine Dorion also says she received a number of words of thanks: “you make us proud”, “you stood up to them”, quite inspiring thanks, for the one who refused this “mold of the serial MP”. “I felt a revolutionary potential in the expression of this emotion,” she says, smiling. A refusal in the face of the imposed order! » Hence, among other rants, his famous Halloween disguise as a model MP, in 2019.
“Failure of hope”
But his point is not limited to his sartorial rebellion. Housing crisis, climate crisis, crisis in short, “the breakdown of the future is intense! », continues the author, returning to her comments made the day before, on the set of Everybody talks about it.
We can’t repeat the same show, we need to awaken irreverence, to create a social movement!
Catherine Dorion
In this sense, Québec solidaire has already done many things, she takes care to emphasize here. “The opposition to the third link, social housing, there are several things that are part of the political conversation thanks to Québec solidaire! […] This party has an incredible history! »
Still, he may be at a crossroads. “And I received a lot of messages from important people in the party who said thank you, thank you for speaking out,” she slips.
But she’s not fooled. “I know there are going to be difficult times in the coming days,” she concludes. The expression of a truth, even if it is subjective, hurts. But I really believe that releasing that, externalizing that, is an essential condition for hope. And we are running out of immense hope! »
Several anxiety attacks and serious exhaustion later, the expression of this “hope” now comes through art for Catherine Dorion. She is cooking, in addition to this book, a documentary theater project called Sciences po 101, Treatise on insubordination for use by the real world, for 2025. The objective of his “artistic approach”? “Let the unsaid come to light. Let us enter into the truth. Let us ask the real questions,” she concludes.
The hotheads, notebooks of punk hope
Lux
376 pages