Everyone knows Janette Bertrand, but do we collectively measure the role she played in the advancement of women’s rights in Quebec? To ensure that this part of the story does not escape anyone, and to honor the prolific 97-year-old author, director Léa Clermont-Dion looks at her career and her influence in today’s society. today through the documentary Janette and daughters.
“It’s not a biography, but my vision of Janette and that of other women she has inspired,” Léa Clermont-Dion immediately explains in an interview.
The idea of making this film came to him when he rediscovered the memoirs of M.me Bertrand during the pandemic. She says she was blown away by the “pitfalls” of size that the latter has encountered all her life. “I wanted to highlight it. This film is a duty of memory. »
In her documentary, Léa Clermont-Dion returns in detail to the career of Mme Bertrand, who had the courage to speak out publicly, to open up a dialogue and defend her convictions to change things, for her and for all other women. “She had to fight to study, work, emancipate herself from her husband and be free to do what she wants,” she continues.
To illustrate the influence of Mme Bertrand, she has also decided to give a voice to women from different backgrounds and ages — among them, Guylaine Tremblay, Martine Delvaux, Noémi Mercier, Kim Lizotte and Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay — who have been marked by the one of these facets, whether feminist, journalist, actress, screenwriter or author.
Of course, the main interested party is at the heart of the story. It plunges us into the childhood of Janette Bertrand, who confides that she understood, by being the victim of attacks, to what extent the bodies of women were objectified by men. She also says that she had to stand up to her father in order to be able to study at university like her brothers. Then, it was against a whole system — the patriarchy — that she had to fight in order to be able to work and express herself.
We are perhaps too ambitious to want to change mentalities in 100 years, when patriarchy has existed for 8000 years.
“I think I was constantly angry,” says Janette Bertrand in an interview with The duty. I didn’t want to be a housewife. I didn’t want to be like my mother, watching for dust. […] I wanted to be free, I wanted to work, I dreamed of being a war journalist. An impossible job at the time for a woman. But by dint of knocking on the doors of newsrooms, she was entrusted in the 1950s with the mail from the heart of the Little Diary. For nearly 20 years, she answered letters from souls in pain who wondered about their romantic relationships and their sexuality, among other things.
“The impact of the Courier du Coeur has been immense in Quebec, it has changed mentalities. Janette was one of the first to talk about homosexuality, to address sexual taboos, including female desire, despite criticism from the clergy in particular,” remarks Léa Clermont-Dion, unable to hide her admiration.
Janette Bertrand then used her platform on television in the 1980s and 1990s to give a voice to marginalized people and to continue to address taboo subjects, such as domestic violence, sexual assault or transidentity. She did it mostly through the shows Love with a capital A and talk to talkof which she was respectively the screenwriter and the animator.
“It was very avant-garde to talk about these subjects that we still talk about a lot today. Also at prime time. It was very popular at the time because Janette was able to talk about it with sensitivity, empathy, openness, without judgment and in a direct way. There was a real dialogue that we no longer have today, ”notes Léa Clermont-Dion.
Fragile progress
At the time of the balance sheets, Janette Bertrand says she is “proud” of her career, even if she does not yet fully realize her influence. On the other hand, it does indeed measure the transformations in society in terms of gender equality. “The men have changed, even if there is still work to be done. I believe there are still men who feel superior, she says. It is especially women who have made the greatest strides. It happened quickly: in a few decades, they went to work, they went to vote, they flourished. »
However, these major advances remain fragile, according to her. For example: the revocation of the right to abortion in the United States.
“We managed to smash the glass ceiling, but now we are trampling on it, and we have lots of small cuts on the foot, analyzes Léa Clermont-Dion for her part. The fact that women have become emancipated brings a big backlash. There is violence that still exists, which is called elsewhere, but it is increasingly disturbing, ”she adds in reference to the rise of misogyny online, a subject to which she recently devoted another documentary, I salute you bitch.
Janette Bertrand, however, wants to keep hope. “We are perhaps too ambitious to want to change mentalities in 100 years, when the patriarchy has existed for 8000 years. It will take more time, but we will one day manage to achieve this equality. »
Janette and daughtersat Tele-Quebec,
Wednesday, October 12 at 8 p.m.