The first time I interviewed Benoît Pelletier was in April 2005, for a very important report on… behind the scenes of the marriage of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles.
What was the Quebec Minister of Canadian Intergovernmental Affairs doing in a special file at the Paris Match ?
Well, here it is: Benoît Pelletier was not only a minister. A renowned constitutionalist, he was also one of the only experts in morganatic marriages… on the planet. This is how he patiently explained to me 1) what a morganatic marriage was, that is to say a marriage under which the wife of the crown prince would never become queen consort, 2) that it would not happen, despite Charles’s promises, since London would refuse to venture down this risky path for the future of the British monarchy.
Benoît Pelletier was right, but that’s not why I bring up this anecdote about the mothballs. This is to highlight the generosity of the character. Honestly, I don’t know many other ministers who would have taken the time to answer a young journalist’s questions about the marriage of an English prince and his lady.
Died on March 30 in Mexico, at the age of 64, Benoît Pelletier was the very definition of an affable man. Since the announcement of his death, other words have come up repeatedly to describe him: gentleman, erudite, rigorous, nuanced, courteous, open-minded, always ready to help… It’s cliché to write it, but in In this case, it seems indeed true: this man was unanimous. Everyone loved him.
Students at the University of Ottawa miss a constitutional law professor who had the ability to bring out the best in them.
Journalists are sad to see an always available expert with encyclopedic knowledge disappear.
Politicians from all walks of life pay tribute to him – from the Bloc leader, Yves-François Blanchet, who salutes “a Quebecer attached to his nation and what makes it such,” to the leader of the government in the Commons, Steven MacKinnon, who salutes a “ convinced federalist [ayant] always offered a positive vision of Quebec in Canada.”
These tributes are not necessarily contradictory. Benoît Pelletier was both federalist and nationalist. Sensitive to the affirmation of Quebec’s identity, in love with the French language, he pleaded for an “asymmetrical federalism”, highly decentralized.
All the same: Benoît Pelletier seemed endowed with the power to transcend ideologies. A feat, in these times of perpetual bickering and extreme polarization.
I think it mainly came down to one thing: the way. The eminent jurist led his political battles with respect, without condescension. Without falling into partisanship. And without ever taking his opponents for fools.
Beyond his political achievements, I believe that it is this – in this way – that the world will remember. On the X network, the Minister of Culture and Communications, Mathieu Lacombe, wrote: “A great Quebecer, who defended our identity and our right to exist, as a nation. Nice, too. »
I would rather say: nice, above all.
The last time I interviewed Benoît Pelletier, in May 2021, he agreed (of course) to answer my questions from his hospital bed. At the end of the line, I could hear his shortness of breath; he was still on oxygen. Devastated by COVID-19, he came out of a 56-day coma. He had lost 40 pounds…
But he was out of the woods. He whispered softly in my ear that life was beautiful.
He told me how he had come close to death. His family came to say goodbye to him. Then, just before he was unplugged, he woke up smiling. It was miraculous.
We were then, obviously, in the middle of a pandemic. After the hell he had experienced, I asked him, was he shocked to see Quebecers treating this virus like a common flu and demonstrating against health measures? He politely dodged my question. He preferred (of course) to focus on the positive. The most important thing, what pushed him to live, was the love he felt for his wife, Danièle Goulet, as well as for his four children, Florence, Françoise, Jean-Christophe and Mathilde.
I titled my column “Death Can Wait”. She waited… three years. This is frankly, cruelly, too little. She took Benoît Pelletier as a traitor, I was told, during his vacation. Nobody expected it. This time, unfortunately, there was no miracle.
For three years, Benoît Pelletier had found form. He enjoyed giving interviews to journalists and giving advice to politicians of all stripes. He wrote, with all the nuance he was capable of, on the most divisive subjects. We will miss his moderate tone. His way of never taking us for fools, too.