When I was a child, during our summers in Saint-Joseph-de-la-Rive, we saw many beluga whales emerging in front of L’Isle-aux-Coudres to catch their breath. Then they retreated to Tadoussac, perched to the north. The last schooners were still sailing and mooring at the quay. For the rest of the world, water cars testified to the cinema of these survivals. Pierre Perrault sometimes stopped by our house to talk about it. Then the river became polluted, transformed. The Saint-Laurent spits out yellow and black. Its ice melts in winter. We like him badly.
It was to meet him that I went to see the 3D animated film for children Katak, the brave beluga by Christine Dallaire-Dupont and Nicola Lemay, indoors. This initiatory journey of a small cetacean too gray for its age, going through hardships and mooring lines of friendship, is based on magnificent images and the voices of local actors. The film takes us to beluga height between Tadoussac and the northern ice. We salute the monoliths of the Mingan Islands, the pebbles of Natashquan, the northern gannets of the Gulf, while bustards, cod, seals and puffins comment on the hero’s chances of survival.
In cartoons, children here are used to the Californian, Japanese or European coasts. This time, the aquatic bottoms, the exterior landscapes and the icebergs exhibit the fragile beauties of their environment. So, so much the better if the Quebec house 10e Ave Productions — behind the animations The legend of Sarila, The rooster of St-VictorAnd this Katak — plants its decor in our homes, nourished by Francophone, Inuit and Amerindian heritage! Young audiences need references. An environmental fable too, this charming and educational film denounces the misdeeds of our factories, our boats, our waste on aquatic fauna and its habitats. Lighthouse alert!
We see the shadow of another animated work, The river of great waters, patiently drawn by hand by Frédéric Back in 1993, when Radio-Canada was still producing home movies. Upriver, from the arrival of the Aboriginal peoples to the present day, he sent the same message as Katak, the brave beluga, three decades earlier: the blue gold of the St. Lawrence is being destroyed! This cry from the indignant heart, Back would push it even more acute if he still lived among us.
So I wanted to follow the footprints of that river, the muse of so many artists. Our territory sprang from the water, like the god Neptune. The First Peoples canoed it. New France had agglutinated on both shores. The collective history and its creations have been woven with its tides, its conquests, its defeats, its drafts, its bridges, its games, its fishings, its hunts and its ecstasies. 19th century engraverse century immortalized its bed, its ports and the silhouettes of the three-masters anchored in front of the cities. Vigneault sang it, feet in the water of the St. Lawrence. Charlebois said he lived on his large moving boulevard, “almost ocean, almost Atlantic”. The river splashes the works. Legends emerge from its foam. Shipwreck or friendly, frozen, in meltdown, in a sea of oil, it enchants, frightens and transforms the creators who get wet in it.
When Roland Jomphe, the poet of Havre-Saint-Pierre, wrote in 1978 his lyrical collection of long-term fisherman Salt water in the veins, he injected the intimate liquids of his gulf. In Gannets, Anne Hébert under gusts of wind, with cursed strikes and senseless disappearances, loaded her waters with tragic poetry. Sunday painters, brush and chisel masters have captured it through its sunsets, its raging waves against the dunes and cliffs below the northeast.
My aquatic quest continued at the Grande Bibliothèque. The exhibition Views of the river, between printed words and sound showers, displays 36 prints by Quebec artists on the theme of the St. Lawrence. Until June 4, the testimonies and the choice of works come from the duo of mother-daughter artists Manon Barbeau and Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette. On the picture rails, the immense blue artery comes alive with boats, creeks, islands, fisheries, bursts of color, rites of survival, laden with various styles and tones.
The cultural course of the river left me dazzled but worried. It goes where it was taken, this great river, with its lost or preserved beauties, its nostalgia, its hacks and its storms. The St. Lawrence resembles Quebeckers. Better, it defines them. Everyone can sail or drown there, destroy wildlife, hit reefs or surf. The Frenchman’s boat drifts offshore. You’ll have to kick ass to keep it afloat.