Quebec journalist Paul-André Comeau died of COVID-19 in Belgium. Former editor of To have to, he made himself known to a wide audience thanks to Radio-Canada television, when he was its correspondent, first based in Belgium and then in England. Accustomed to international and economic issues, Paul-André Comeau has also been a professor at various universities, in addition to serving as president of the Commission d’accès à l’information.
Jean-Louis Roy, Director of To have to in 1985, contacted him in London to ask him to join the newspaper team. “I called him in England. I made him come. At the time, Paul-André Comeau covered British news at the time of Margaret Thatcher’s stranglehold on politics. He will say in an interview, after the fact, that it was about “a woman who imposed some with her precise and brittle ideas in political matters. […] Mrs Thatcher, with sometimes brutal, even inhumane means, imposed her style and got Britain moving again. It was terribly annoying, brittle, but from a journalistic point of view, it was absolutely fantastic. »
He wanted to pursue his career as a correspondent in Washington for Radio-Canada, but he finally accepted the proposal of the To have to to Montreal.
Paul-André Comeau replaced Lise Bissonnette as editor-in-chief. He will leave these functions when she returns to To have to, this time as director of the institution. Joined by The duty When Paul-André Comeau’s death was announced, Lise Bissonnette remembered a man of vast culture who had real intellectual stature. “Paul-André Comeau had an extensive personal culture that served him well. And he had a sense of history. He was, I would say, a being of balance. In journalism, we forget too quickly, personal culture is major, fundamental. And Paul-André Comeau was unquestionably someone of great culture. »
banker’s son
Paul-André Comeau was born in 1940 in Montreal, in the working-class neighborhood of Saint-Henri. Her father is a bank manager. “I consider that we were privileged, especially since at the time, Saint-Henri was a rather underprivileged environment”, he will say, recalling his memories. At home, there is a lot of politics. Reading the newspapers goes without saying. A student of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, Paul-André Comeau will continue his studies in Granby, where he is responsible for the student newspaper. He carried out classical studies in the same city, at the Collège Monseigneur-Prince. He finished them in 1961, at the Séminaire de Saint-Hyacinthe.
Each summer, when he returns to Granby, he learns about radio on the local airwaves of CHEF, an AM band channel, as well as about the written press, in the pages of The Voice of the East. He had retained from years of practice on the air a diction characteristic of the extreme correctness of the announcers of that time.
From the University of Montreal, he obtained a bachelor’s degree in political science, then completed a master’s degree in 1965 at the same institution. “At that time, universities, […] had funds to bring in teachers from abroad. This is how I was lucky enough to have, for several weeks, two French professors who made a big impression on me: Maurice Duverger, the great specialist in political parties, and Georges Lavau”. Impressed by these professors, he will complete his training in political science in Paris, in their footsteps. In the band of students in Paris who will be his, we find Bernard Landry, future Prime Minister, Yves Duhaime, future Minister of Finance, and Jacques Lévesque of UQAM. In France, he studied with Alfred Grosser and Raymond Aron. He obtained a DES from the National Foundation of Political Sciences in 1967. It was at the time that he met a Belgian, married, and became the father of a son.
Correspondent for Radio-Canada
Upon his return to the country, he in turn taught political science at the University of Ottawa until 1970, before embarking on a career as a journalist in Europe, first as a freelancer, then in the service of Radio-Canada. as correspondent. State television listeners are getting used to seeing and hearing him on the newscasts.
“He was one of those who knew international politics the best when he joined Le Devoir,” observes Jean-Louis Roy in an interview. “He had a rare human benevolence, taking his time with others, trying to understand everyone as best he could. This benevolence is rarely encountered. Not to mention that he had a strong sense of ethics in everything, which made no concessions. He was asking for facts. »
Paul-André Comeau had already been living in Brussels for several years when former Prime Minister Robert Bourassa arrived there in turn, in exile following his electoral defeat on November 15, 1976. Bourassa intended to take advantage of this moment of political respite to study the European system. “Paul-André Comeau told us that Bourassa often dropped by unexpectedly at his place, in Brussels, to discuss things,” recalls Lise Bissonnette. “Very studious, Bourassa wanted to talk about the European Union, a system of federalism in which he believed. He was looking to confront his ideas with someone who knew about it. »
At that time and until 1982, Paul-André Comeau was Radio-Canada’s correspondent for the European Economic Community. He left Belgium in 1982 to become a correspondent in London. It was in 1985 that he returned for good to Quebec to occupy the To have towhere he served as editor-in-chief until 1990. He then said he was exhausted by the torments of the newspaper.
During his career, in addition to a hundred editorials, he wrote a number of texts in various journals, including National Action, Language and society, Cap-aux-Diamants and theInternational Journal of Canadian Studies.
In 1982, Paul-André Comeau published, with Québec-Amérique, a first study devoted to the Bloc populaire canadien, a short-lived political party born in the wake of the conscription crisis in 1942. a doctoral thesis that he will never complete. We come across the figures of Jean Drapeau, André Laurendeau, Michel Chartrand and others of whom he spoke willingly and abundantly, served by a vast culture of this period of the Second World War. Paul-André Comeau also published in 2002, with Jean-Pierre Fournier, The Quebec lobby in Paris.
Upon leaving the To have to, he was appointed president of the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec by the National Assembly. He also teaches political science, as a visiting professor, to students at Laval University. In his courses, he offers a vast panorama, in the style of lectures, of the history of Quebec. His students remember him as a man of rare personal elegance, served by an ability to communicate in a precise and sonorous language that is not very frequent.
In his courses, Paul-André Comeau did not hesitate to recall the social effects that have weighed on the Quebec population over time. He dwelt a lot on the effects of economic crises, changes in perspective with regard to sexuality, class and generational oppositions that have arisen over time. All of this was located under a big tent, that of the evolution of the different nationalist currents that crossed French Canada before 1960 and after.
In 2000, Paul-André Comeau was now attached to the National School of Public Administration (ÉNAP), before retiring for good by returning to Europe, where he had always kept his house.
Paul-André Comeau died Tuesday in Brussels, following the consequences of the COVID-19. The news was confirmed by his brother Yvan Comeau, a long-time doctor in the Eastern Townships. Paul-André Comeau had been alone in Brussels since his wife died a few months ago. He had lost his son, ten years ago, in an automobile accident which constituted the very great pain of his life.