The screenwriter who wrote his own death

Commander Denis Caouette, formerly in charge of the Montreal police counterterrorism unit, had the shock of his life reading Press Saturday morning.

The long portrait of the faceless author of the series After, Trapped and Campus, it was that of his good friend François Pagé, a frequent traveler known by the nickname “The French Writer”, whom he frequented as a crisis management consultant at the SPVM between 2002 and 2014.

Read the column “Le Réjean Ducharme from Quebec TV”

According to Denis Caouette, François Pagé, whom he considered to be his brother, died of very unwell bone cancer in the spring of 2014. “He told us that he had fallen ill after inhaling junk in the air of New York after the attacks of September 11, 2001, where he was on a mission, ”recalls Denis Caouette, 55, who retired in 2019.

At the other end of Highway 20, a former colleague of François Pagé at the Quebec City Police Department (SPVQ) also swallowed her coffee askew. The François Pagé described in Press, solid fellow, erudite and discreet man, talented writer, she worked with him from 2007 until his death in the spring of 2014, when he was advising the Quebec City police on the consequences of potential catastrophes such as riots, explosions or climatic disasters.

“The K project, to face possible crises, it was he who was behind it. François was a good friend. But he was often absent for short periods, he said that he was going on a humanitarian mission in refugee camps all over the world, ”says this source who still works in the police environment in the Quebec City region and who feels betrayed. by François Pagé.

In the Old Capital, one of the last times François Pagé was seen alive was at the funeral of former police chief Serge Bélisle, in March 2013. “François arrived on crutches and his broken fingers were covered with ‘metal splints. He pushed himself during the shift, and we never saw him again, ”says a former senior officer of the SPVQ.

A year later, on April 24, 2014, the relatives of François Pagé received a brief email announcing his death “after having fought a very long fight” against cancer. “At François’ request, I must advise you not to take any action to render a form of public or group tribute to his person or to his memory or to his past work. He wanted his death to pass in silence except for his very close friends ”, we can read in this electronic message relayed at the time by one of the rare confidants of François Pagé.

So there was no funeral or memorial service. And no obituary has been published. For his close collaborators and friends, François Pagé has therefore been dead for more than seven years. End of the story.

Except no. This story worthy of a spy TV series has only just begun.

François Pagé, 61, is not dead. He invented the death chapter of his life by demonstrating an abundant imagination similar to that which he deploys in his television projects. An author who scripts his own death, in an incredible amount of detail, you only see in Hollywood movies, and more.

If François Pagé has succeeded in ensuring that his scenario of announced death does not collapse, it is largely thanks to his efficient, inventive and agile pen. All the police officers he met believed in it and many now feel a mixture of anger and astonishment.

According to several testimonies collected for this report, François Pagé, super discreet, never invited anyone to his home, in Hatley, in the Eastern Townships. He never spoke of his private life and limited his social circle. And when he wanted to confide in, he corresponded by email, in private, where he kept full control of the discussion, without his interlocutor being able to ask him questions.

For example, after the announcement of his diagnosis of bone cancer in the fall of 2011, François wrote this to one of his friends who wanted to accompany him in his illness: “I am now in the cycle of the last times. My last first snow, my last Christmas, my last meeting with so-and-so from whom I conceal my state of health so as not to truncate our exchange. Death does not scare me, we are two old traveling companions. Many times, a lot more than you will ever know, she brushed me with her dress, flirtatious, trying to tell me: come and rest, come close your eyes to everything you have seen and come stop seeing it night after night in your nightmares. ”

Even though he suffered from a severe form of cancer, there was never a last time for François Pagé, who kept his real name after his false death. He also did not leave the greater Sherbrooke region, where he has always lived. In short, he did not hide very far.

François Pagé claimed to have ruined himself in experimental treatments in the United States, in particular at the Johns Hopkins hospital in Baltimore, to cure his cancer. According to what he disclosed to comrades from the SPVM, his medical bill would have climbed to a million dollars, which would have forced him to sell his house in Hatley to move to a semi-basement in Sherbrooke.

“He told me to live in great poverty. While in a coma, he even allegedly got robbed at home. He had kept a box for me, which he wanted to give to me after his death. I obviously never received this box, ”notes Denis Caouette, former SPVM commander, who now doubts this version of the facts.

After a stint at Bell, where he was a lineman, then assigned to communications, François Pagé founded his own company, Pagé & Compagnie, in the early 1990s. Pagé & Compagnie offered advice in crisis management and analysis risks to private companies or police forces. Like: what to do during a shooting in an auditorium. In this field of expertise, François Pagé was excellent, the best of the best. “He took us on a boat about his death, but what he taught us was very useful,” insists a former Quebec City police officer.

It was by offering his services as a public security consultant that François Pagé won mandates with the SPVM, the SPVQ and the Longueuil police. He was recognized for his thoroughness, relevance and the quality of his research.

At the same time, François Pagé, who also called himself Charlie and Tembo, wrote compulsively, including stories of his many trips. He recorded his adventures in long emails à la Paul Marchand about mass graves in Bosnia, Janjaweed militias or refugee camps in Sudan.

From one of his emails, sent from Ethiopia in 2011: “It’s one thing to bury a starving body in a refugee camp. I have done it so many times. It is quite another to dig up bodies under piles of stone, line up the skeletons, photograph them, and then put them back under the stones again. I am writing these lines to you and I am exhausted, my hands are clogged up and still shaking ”, François Pagé wrote to his correspondents.

Did he really visit all these places? One thing is certain, the exotic photos that François Pagé claimed to have taken himself have for the most part been stolen from the internet, including the magazine’s websites. The Economist and the American daily The Washington Post.

Since the start of this investigation, François Pagé, a sixty-year-old with a red and white beard, had refused to grant us an interview on the pretext of confidentiality clauses which lock him in silence until 2030. With whom and why? Mystery. By email, the screenwriter ofAfter (Radio-Canada) and Trapped (addikTV) demanded that research on him be stopped, research which “seriously complicated his life”.

To his producer Michel d’Astous from Duo Productions, François Pagé repeated the same refrain: if I could explain everything, I would do it, but I have no right, there are clauses in my contracts that prevent me to speak.

Then, Tuesday noon, a total turnaround. The phone rang and, at the end of the line, it was François Pagé, calling from a hidden number. Very quickly in the conversation, he confessed to faking his own death in 2014.

Secret and surly man, François Pagé continues his confession: “The cancer was real. As I neared the end, I saw an opportunity to turn the page. I was in a depressed state and decided to pull the plogue. It’s simple, I was spinning the wrong cotton, it’s a bad decision and it’s okay for people to resent me. Yes, I betrayed them. Did I do this to hurt them? No. Did they suffer? Surely, ”explains François Pagé.

This author, very talented and appreciated on television, it must be said, does not consider having lied to the police, but rather to friends during a period of medicated distress. “This rough end is catching up with me now. My ticket, I will pay it, I will assume my error, ”insists François Pagé.

In travel diaries that he relayed to his close guard, François Pagé mentioned the failed adoption of a little girl in Yemen, he spoke about his wife of the last 25 years who would have recently died and reported that a colleague had taken a bullet for him.

“You asked me why I never talked about these things when I am in Quebec? How do you want to share them with people who don’t know what thirst is? Who does not know what is the fear that lasts for hours, days? I would not find the words and I would pass for an enlightened one, ”said François Pagé in his correspondence.

Travel did exist, swears François Pagé. And in what context? Sometimes professional, sometimes personal, he replies. Details remain unclear. The screenwriter is also said to be in remission from his bone cancer.

Producer Michel d’Astous, who co-signs the thriller Classified secret with François Pagé, was greatly shaken by the revelations of Press. “I was surprised like everyone else. We didn’t know any of that. It happened before we signed our contract with François Pagé, in 2016, ”recalls Michel d’Astous from Duo Productions.

When I confirmed to him that François Pagé, the Réjean Ducharme of Quebec television, still lived in the same place as in the mid-2000s, the ex-police officer Denis Caouette wanted to be clear about it. He went to Hatley on Tuesday morning to confront the one he has always described as a mentor. Denis Caouette was so close to François Pagé that he baptized his security company Solution Tembo, the nickname of his friend when the author was working in the community environment.

In Hatley, the man who stood in front of Denis Caouette had certainly aged, but it was the “same guy”, he notes.

“It hurts, but I now understand François’ gesture. Mental illness is not obvious. He has committed suicide artistically. He did not see the end and he wanted to script his departure. Today I doubt everything he did. I told François that I wanted to see his passport, that I had plenty of other questions. I maintain that he is one of the most intelligent people I have encountered in my life, ”explains Denis Caouette.

Writing the script of his death and acting it for more than seven years, indeed requires skills that few people have.