For a long time, like several actors and presenters who have tasted her medicine, Louise Cousineau terrified me.
By its effective and corrosive pen. By his gravelly voice, sculpted by cigarettes. And by her influence: no one wanted to alienate her, oh boy no. Neither in the newspaper nor in the TV world, where she reigned for four decades.
Mme Louise, a legend of The Press, invented the profession of TV columnist as it is practiced today by incorporating opinion into reporting. No one told anecdotes with as much vividness and detail as Mme Cousineau.
And she was jubilant when her court gathered around her messy office, very close to the telephone station, cluttered with papers and old DVD cases. Then, Mme Louise started the engine, which sometimes coughed violently: “my little guy, did you know that…”. The punch always ended with a thunderous “Eccoute”, which marked his exasperation, always theatrical, never boring.
No one loved a good story as much as Mme Louise, who relayed them in this newspaper and at the microphone of Paul Arcand, alias Monsieur Paul, where his segment was religiously listened to by all the crowned heads of the audiovisual industry. This woman loved her job and her eyes sparkled when she grabbed a juicy scoop.
I quote her, from memory, when she was about to drop a media bomb: “I always like to put a little shit in the fan”. That was pure Louise Cousineau. A little vulgar, provocative and crude.
This flame colored his thousands of chronicles, written in a simple, limpid and often straightforward style, which readers devoured. Butme Louise hated as much as she praised it.
Julie Snyder does not budge: it was Louise Cousineau who “put her on the map” by devoting a column to the interview she did with Serge Gainsbourg, in November 1990, as part of the emission To go out on Télévision Quatre Saisons. René Angélil found her funny in all her eccentricities.
Louise Cousineau was a worker. Even with a work schedule compressed into four days a week, she wrote five columns on a weekly basis. On Thursday evenings, she stayed very, very late at the newspaper to polish her paper for the next day as well as that for Saturday.
I know quite a few less valiant than Mme Louise, who maintained this breathless pace until her departure, after 45 years at The Press. Respect. She wrote short. She separated her texts into distinct blocks. It was fearsomely precise. And there is no question of changing a single word in his text without warning him. Otherwise, it was nuclear war, I’m hardly exaggerating.
Over the years, I have often heard her argue with desk chairs to obtain more space for her texts. Today, she wouldn’t run into this problem, because TV is much less snubbed, and it’s a little, a lot thanks to her. Mme Louise deeply loved Quebec television and held in horror those who spat on this art considered insignificant (her favorite insult), in another era.
I learned a lot being M’s official “intern”me Louise from 2002. “We write for the world, never forget that, my little guy,” she repeated to me between two trips to the newspaper smoking room, where she had a salon.
Lesson learned, Mme Louise. Also, you should always be wary of “little bosses who were useless,” according to her. Louise Cousineau, a hyper-cultured woman, hated authority: she did what she wanted, when she liked it.
At press events, paralyzed publicists stopped breathing when Louise Cousineau showed up trotting around. The buffet had to be to M’s taste.me Cousineau, it was necessary that Mme Cousineau had her ashtray at all times (we let her smoke inside, obviously) and we had to find parking for her, otherwise she would run off grumbling.
Today’s artists who complain, boohoo, about the harshness of critics would not have survived a week in the Cousineau era. This formidable columnist would put her finger on the sore, then plunge her entire hand into the wound and could persist for a long time. This harshness earned him many enemies, who still shudder when they hear his name.
On the other hand, the stars that Louise Cousineau defended and supported remember it years later. Characters like her are no longer created, who arouse hatred as much as admiration.
I reread several of his columns before writing this one and cursed that Mme Louise was funny, impactful and relevant. She had an unparalleled sense of formula. With her readers, she talked about everything: her dogs, her grandchildren and even her mental health problems, which gave rise to one of her most moving columns, which she titled “Journey to the End of the Night “. It took a lot of courage to approach a taboo subject like dark thoughts so frankly.
At the heart of his concerns, Mme Louise constantly spoke about the world, that we had to “stay close to the world” and listen to it. She was one hundred percent right. Another lesson learned, Mme Louise.
At the end, when her knees gave out, Mme Louise regularly kicked her bear paw slippers far under her desk. She was unable to get them back. Yes, Mme Louise walked around the newsroom in slippers, does that really surprise you?
“Whoa, could you help me with my slippers? I’m not able to take them back anymore,” she implored in her scotch voice.
No problem, Mme Louise.
I was not in the intimate circle of Louise Cousineau, who always looked after me, as I looked after her. Even though our working relationships have sometimes been stormy. Mme Louise protected her territory and had buried mines everywhere.
However, she always offered me her famous raisins which had been macerated in very strong alcohol. She kept a jar of it in her desk drawer.
Spoiler: it wasn’t edible, help. She insisted: it’s good for your health, I swear. She then went back to the smoking room, with her good friend Josée, ready to tell another of her tasty anecdotes. Listen!