Essay | The Quebec of Lise Bissonnette

The former director of To have to and conductor of the Grande Bibliothèque project is told in a book of interviews that gives the keys to better understand his commitment and his vision of Quebec.

I’m probably not the only one for whom the name of Lise Bissonnette is synonymous with rigor and high-level intellectual commitment. His outlook, his original thinking and his way of tackling political and social issues without complacency make him one of the most brilliant minds in Quebec.

Throughout her life, Lise Bissonnette has put her pen to the service of information, reflection and fiction. His impressive career is inseparable from the intellectual and cultural history of Quebec.

We naturally associate its name with that of everyday life. The duty where she served as columnist, parliamentary correspondent, editor and ultimately, director. She was the first woman to run this newspaper founded by the very conservative Henri Bourassa, and the first woman in the country to run a national newspaper.

She had a profound impact on the history of this daily newspaper and that of Quebec journalism. His texts were incisive, hard-hitting, influential.

And as a columnist, she did not disdain a bit of theater on occasion. How can we forget his resounding NO in the summer of 1992, during the discussions surrounding the Charlottetown Accords? In memory, never has such a short editorial – three letters – caused so much noise.

We salute the initiative of Pascale Ryan for having had the idea of ​​these interviews which forced Lise Bissonnette to revisit such a rich career. M^me Bissonnette is not the kind of woman to reveal her moods in the public square, or to pour out on her private life, but she nevertheless lets slip a few confidences in these exchanges, including the reason why she has not published a novel since 2001.

Life’s work

Lise Bissonnette is also a high level manager, a woman with a vision. After a rich journalistic career, she came face to face with reality by accepting the challenge, launched by Lucien Bouchard, to create the Grande Bibliothèque, the construction and opening of which she supervised. Always, this desire to democratize culture and education. Today, the former CEO makes a severe assessment of the direction taken by this institution, the first to emerge in Quebec since the Quiet Revolution.

Lise Bissonnette also talks about her mandates at the head of the UQAM board of directors as well as at the presidency of a committee on the future of the Olympic Park. Difficult mandates that she qualifies as failures with hindsight.

Here too, its commitment was motivated by the desire to provide Quebecers with institutions that contribute to the democratization of education. It is his workhorse, the work of a lifetime.

And we better understand where this commitment comes from when she talks about her childhood in Abitibi. Lise Bissonnette’s foundations are made up of shortcomings and frustrations of not having had access to a first-class, more demanding and stimulating education. This thirst for knowledge and culture remained inexhaustible throughout her life and even motivated her to complete a doctorate in French letters when she was in her sixties!

In the form of questions and answers, these “conversations” form an enlightening essay on post-Quiet Revolution Quebec. In the eyes of a woman who is so demanding, towards others as well as towards herself, the challenges facing Quebec society are all the more obvious.

Lise Bissonnette: interviews

Pascale Ryan

boreal

210 pages