Roger Paré, great youth author and illustrator, died at age 92 on March 31, 2022. Born in 1929 in Ville-Marie, Témiscamingue, the self-taught artist made his debut at Radio-Canada in the late 1950s. For 25 years, he illustrated credits for children’s shows, including The surprise box, Bobino and A window in my head.
Recognized for his works in which poetry rhymes with humor, Roger Paré was one of the first authors published by the editions of La courte scale. Her albums from the Plaisirs collection, some of which were written with the collaboration of Simone Leroux, and her picture books devoted to animals have won over generations of young readers. Sold in French to more than 600,000 copies, his books were also translated in the United States, Mexico, Colombia, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Egypt, China and South Korea.
During his prolific career, Roger Paré was twice awarded the Canada Council for the Arts Children’s Literature Prize for the best illustrations of a French book, either for A window in my head (Raymond Plante, The short scale, 1979), adaptation of the children’s show, and The alphabet (The Short Scale, 1985), nursery rhyme book.
We also owe him books for adults, Humor, a philosophy of life (1967, The Day) and In my shop (HMH, 1983), two books of humorous drawings, as well as Words of prisoners (2010, Quebec America), where he is interested in the human condition and the notion of freedom.
From 1965 to 1991, he also worked as an illustrator and cartoonist for various Canadian magazines (News, Maclean’s, Outlook, 7 days), French (Planet, Plexus) and American (look, Playboy, ever green, TheWashingtonian). For more than 35 years, he also collaborated with the trade union newspaper The steelworker. “Retirement does not exist, because for me, drawing is like breathing,” he confided to Andrée Poulin in an article published in the magazine Lurelu in 2008, the year Library and Archives Canada set up the Fonds Roger-Paré.