Caroline’s memory | The Press

That Saturday, Quebec said goodbye to Jean-Pierre Ferland, and knowing Ferland was so well surrounded, I preferred to go to the funeral of the writer Caroline Dawson at the Saint-Jean-Baptiste church, rue Rachel, not very far from where she lived.

The sun was bright, as it often is in times of great sadness. It’s never like the movies where it rains on funeral days. Life always calls us to order.

Caroline Dawson’s family was very generous in sharing their grief with the public, nothing forced them to do so. When you are a monument like Jean-Pierre Ferland, who has composed some of the most beautiful songs in our repertoire for decades, our life no longer completely belongs to us, because it means so many things to so many people. But Caroline is a life cut short in mid-flight by cancer, which makes us regret all the works she could have offered us. A monument under construction interrupted by this merciless disease. Caroline’s father delivered a speech in French, English and Spanish, which made the whole congregation in the church cry, I will never forget that.

I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I write that Caroline Dawson was a monument under construction. In the magazine’s special feature Quebec letters (L.Q.) which is dedicated to him, just arrived on newsstands, Félix Morin states in the introduction that Where I hide, his first book, is “the most recent of Quebec classics”, recalling that this novel continues to gain followers, in addition to being taught in numerous establishments. He is right.

In just three books, in different forms – the novel Where I hidethe collection of poetry What are you and the children’s book Going from afar –, Caroline Dawson knew how to touch the best fiber in us, with this simple intention of bringing her absent mother into our literature in the books she read, so that her children can also know where they come from.

She had such gratitude towards her parents that she made them immortal figures of whom they will never be ashamed.

For my part, I will always carry within me the image of this Chilean child who discovered her first Quebecois friend in Passe-Partout. Also learning that in my neighborhood, Center-Sud, the Dawson family was taking root despite additional challenges – including, and not the least, learning a new language, French – absolutely held up a mirror to me necessary.

I haven’t stopped recommending Where I hide And What are you around me, knowing very well that these books were going to hit the mark every time. There are titles like that which have this magical power to please everyone, without ever being hyped.

I was not a friend of Caroline Dawson, more of a simple admirer. Of her work, but also of her generosity when she spoke about other people’s books on the radio. Of her lucidity when she began to recount her experience of cancer in chronicles, always on the radio. I think that each time, we returned to our daily lives with an extra layer of soul, despite the grief.

I met Caroline only once, for the release of her children’s book Going from afar. Honestly, it was an excuse, because children’s literature is not my specialty. I knew his health was failing, but I absolutely wanted to tell him in person how important his books were.

Read the column “Because she comes from far away”

In writing my article, I had the impression of adding nothing new to what Caroline Dawson gave and did to us, but I had the feeling of having received as a gift this permission to express my lifelong admiration for her. voice. Then I didn’t want to bother her anymore. Because many of us wanted to talk to him, write to him, encourage him, and I didn’t want to take another minute of the precious time he had left.

And yet, until the end, she accepted interviews, notably with Émilie Perreault, who announced to her the creation of a literary prize bearing her name which will reward a novel or an essay published in French by an author. of diversity. Because there will always be a depth in this external gaze which is born from the margins where we want to relegate everything that is different from the norm. Where we remain silent, where we hide, but without ever ceasing to see.

And then there is this beautiful number from L.Q.illustrated by the superb photos of Lawrence Fafard, which Caroline Dawson was able to see before passing away, which makes this file even more special since she gave her agreement from start to finish.

In addition to an interview with Félix Morin, she chose the collaborators, and we can read the texts of Didier Eribon, Michel Marc Bouchard, Gérald Gaudet, Katia Belkhodja, Alain Farah, Nicholas Dawson and Jennifer Bélanger.

The most moving for me, who is a big sister, is that of her brother, Nicholas Dawson, also a renowned writer, researcher and editor, who inherited his sister’s last notebooks. We don’t talk enough about this love between brother and sister, and in this text, Writing for life (portrait of my fear), Nicholas recounts how he and Caroline supported each other, how together they overcame the countless fears of their childhood. “It is always with you that fear is tolerable,” he writes, confiding that after three years of being afraid For her, “today, I fear the possibility of fear without You “. Caroline the sociologist considered that Nicholas was the writer of the family, she feared playing into his flowerbeds by writing at the dawn of his forties, and yet it was he who encouraged her to publish these books which made now a date in the literary history of Quebec, and which she thought she would keep in her drawers. “You can tell me if it’s crap,” she told him as she made him read her manuscript. “I laughed again because it wasn’t bullshit, the whole of Quebec was going to prove it to you the following year, that Where I hide is not crap, but the story (sorry, no, the novel, you stick to that word) that we needed – I say We, that’s you and me, then all those people who found in your words the beginning of a repair until now almost absent in Quebec culture, whether of origin or host. »

I console myself by telling myself that her literary children will be numerous, while knowing how terribly she will be missed by her children, her lover, her parents, her brothers, her friends and her students. She fought against illness and injustice until the end, she deserves rest, while we have the duty to keep alive the light she carried. What this number L.Q. done beautifully.