His YouTube channel has 325,000 subscribers. His video clips have been viewed 22 million times. Stratospheric statistics, envied by all public figures. However, on the public terrace of rue De Castelnau, where he drinks a cortado from Café Larue, no one recognizes him.
Laurent Turcot is not a star like the others. He doesn’t sing. Don’t dance. Don’t star in the reality show of the hour.
What does he owe his fame to?
To history.
What a story ?
All the story. Big or small. Serious or playful. That of the French Revolution. That of the pharaohs. That of the Patriots. But also those of tattoos, menstruation and unicorns. A puzzling portfolio for a professor at the University of Quebec in Trois-Rivières, labeled as an “eighteenth-century” – a specialist in the XVIIIe century.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
Laurent Turcot in discussion with our journalist Alexandre Pratt
“It’s not a super sexy title,” he drops.
Not bad less, in any case, than the shock formulas he uses to promote his capsules, like The worst year in history, The story of poo Where Christopher Columbus discovers … the clitoris.
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Laurent Turcot was born 42 years ago in Quebec City, in an environment he defines as “bourgeois and intellectual”.
His great-grandfather was a general in the French army. His grandfathers, teacher and doctor. One of her uncles, a psychiatrist, participated in the demonstrations of May 1968. Her mother was a professor of biology. “You could say that I grew up in a world that favored studies,” he agrees, laughing.
From his childhood, he discovered a passion for teaching. “Sometimes, when I was sick, my grandfather would take me to his work, at the Charles-De Koninck pavilion, at Laval University. In classrooms of 300, 400 students. He had a stentorian voice. It impressed me. When I started teaching at university, I actually refused to use a microphone. It was out of the question! ”
Already, as a young lecturer, Laurent Turcot had a sense of the spectacle. “If I hadn’t become a teacher, I would have become an actor,” he says. It was close. In Laval, he staged a play, Figaro’s wedding, in which he gave himself the main role. A success. He won the Robert-Lepage Prize, and was able to follow the Quebec playwright in his creation of the play Zulu Time, with Peter Gabriel. His interest in an acting career ended soon after, but acting and directing remained at the heart of his projects.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
“Teaching is a show ! », He gets carried away.
For years, Laurent Turcot taught at the university and wrote books. A busy career. But for him, it remains insufficient. Its ambitions are greater. “I asked myself: what’s next? »He was then inspired by a concept widespread in France, but not very present here: the notion of popular university.
“As a teacher, I am a civil servant. Yes, I have to speak to students. But I must also render a service to the community. It seems necessary to me, ”he explains. It is in this context that his YouTube channel was born, History will tell us, today followed by 325,000 subscribers. A phenomenal success. To give you an idea, the main TVA and Noovo channels on YouTube have 38,000 and 16,000 subscribers.
Check out the channel History will tell us
In his capsules, Laurent Turcot talks as much about political history as about popular history, a sub-genre long under-exploited in Quebec. “I am a big fan of the history of everyday life. Because it speaks to people. And because history is not just a series of political events and dates to remember. ”
True. So why don’t we teach popular history more in our schools?
“Because we don’t have time,” he laments. The Ministry’s agenda is heavy. The number of hours of lessons, limited. Fortunately, he says, more and more students are devoting their theses to popular culture topics.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
There is a current. It’s coming. I see more and more subjects like the history of television. The history of sport. The history of beer. The birth of the Quebec star-system. There are tons of things to do. It is an exciting field.
Laurent Turcot
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Laurent Turcot has a little sweet icing side. But when it comes to the place of history in public space, it becomes more serious. It is a divisive subject. Think of the debate on the debunking of statues, or the one on the declarations of recognition of the territories not ceded by the indigenous peoples.
Have contemporary historians become activists?
The question makes him smile. He takes the time to finish his last sip of coffee before plunging into the heart of the debate.
“Activism, there has always been. Our history has been marked by nationalism and federalism. By the school of Quebec and that of Montreal. Is history a pure objective product? No. ”
He sets his cup down on the table and leans over to make his point.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
“Take a follower of Duplessis who studies the rebellion of the Patriots, and a federalist of the 1990s who watches the same event. It is certain that they will not have the same interpretation of the facts. And you know what ? This is a good thing. This is what makes historiography so rich. This is what gives thought. ”
The historian has no word of truth. The goal is to make the foreign country of the past less foreign to those who look at it today.
Laurent Turcot
And what does he think of the debunking of the statues of men of the past who committed reprehensible acts by today’s standards?
“The statue of John A. MacDonald?” Unbolt it. It does not bother me.
– Why ?
– Because it’s not history. It’s memory. It’s not the same thing. We decided to put forward a man who was openly anti-French speaking. MacDonald is also guilty of initiating residential schools for Aboriginal people. We don’t have to be proud of that. Reconciliation, it goes through there. We’re not bleaching history. When I hear columnists say: “That’s it, we’re going to forget the story.” Hey, the gang! Go to BAnQ. Go to the municipal library. Come to our classes. In our schools. We talk about these people. Our goal is not to judge these people. It is to understand them. ”
Laurent Turcot wants the government to launch the Estates General on statues. He is also in favor of building a museum that could house the statues – an idea he describes as “excellent”.
In any case, he is satisfied to see that the story is moving in the public space.
” A chance. This is how the French Revolution happened. We destroyed statues of kings. On the ruins of the Old World, we will build the new. And that is quite correct. As we say [l’historien] Jonathan Livernois, we are not destroying history. We are in the process of redoing it… ”
Questionnaire without filter
Coffee and me : at least one coffee per day. But if I take a past noon, I don’t sleep!
The people I would like to bring together for a supper, dead or alive : my family. We are in a pandemic context. Half of my family is in France. I haven’t seen her for a long time.
My favorite museums : the British Museum and the National Gallery, in London. It’s free. You go there as you want, you can ask yourself, you have the impression that it belongs to you.
An event that I would have liked to attend : the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. Because I’m not sure it only lasted 20 minutes. That a man was holding the stopwatch and said, “OK gang, it’s over.” I would like to know what role Montcalm, the Canadians and the Aboriginals played.
A place where I would take my students : Versailles. Because we see both the beautiful and the ugly. The corpses on which Versailles was built, and the dazzling idea of the concentration of power.
Who is Laurent Turcot?
- Born in 1979, he grew up in Quebec.
- After studying history at Laval University, at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris and at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM), in 2008 he became a professor at the University of Quebec in Trois -Rivers (UQTR).
- He is the author of several essays, notably Sports and leisure: a story from the origins to the present day, as well as novels from the series The man of the shadows.
- Its capsules History will tell us generated over 22 million views on YouTube