On the TV set, the atmosphere is good-natured. “Why did you specialize in high school girls and babes? asks host Bernard Pivot to Gabriel Matzneff. The guests laugh. The writer, he is proud. He prefers to date girls who are not yet “hardened by life”, he explains with a smile. A younger girl, you see, is “nicer, even if she becomes very, very quickly hysterical and as crazy as when she is older.”
And it continues like this. And everyone is laughing on set.
Everyone, except Denise Bombardier.
“I think I’m currently living on another planet,” she begins in a calm but firm voice. She could be quiet; after all, she has a lot to lose. We are in March 1990, on the set of the literary program Apostrophes. Within the French intelligentsia, we still tolerate, in the name of literature, that a pedophile writer can document his adolescent conquests in a book. And even that he brags about it on TV.
“Me, Mr. Matzneff seems pitiful to me”, resumes Denise Bombardier, who goes on the attack: “Mr. Matzneff tells us that he sodomizes little girls of 14 years old, 15 years old, that these little girls are crazy about him. We know that little girls can be crazy about a gentleman who has a certain literary aura. Besides, we know that old gentlemen attract little children with sweets…”
At his side, the French writer wavers, stammers, tries a lamentable response: “I forbid you to pass this kind of judgment! Firstly because a book is a writing, it’s a tone, it’s a universe…”
Denise Bombardier then served him the fatal blow: “Literature cannot be used as an alibi. There are limits, even to literature. »
Gabriel Matzneff is floored. Against the indignant, true and courageous words of a great lady of communication, he didn’t stand a chance.
I will remember Denise Bombardier, a key figure in the Quebec media world for the past 50 years, for this incredibly satisfying TV moment, an excerpt that I could listen to on repeat, it was so well sent. For that, and for the bouquet of flowers.
Not to brag, but yes, Denise Bombardier has already sent me flowers. A big pink bouquet, to congratulate me on a column published in February 2021. The text in question scolded McGill University for the clientelism it had shown by reimbursing the course of two literature students who had complained of reading the phrase ‘work like ghosts’ in an old study novel – and giving them credit for the dropped course!
Madame B. had found it extraordinary. Hence the bouquet, delivered to me. It was… confusing. A columnist who sends flowers to a columnist from a competing newspaper, frankly, I didn’t think that could exist.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY ISABELLE HACHEY
The bouquet of flowers sent to our columnist by Denise Bombardier in February 2021
And then, I admit, it was a little intimidating. Because, as far back as I can remember, Madame B. had been part of my media landscape.
First female host of a public affairs program – Black on white, at Radio-Canada, from 1979 to 1983 – she had made her place in a world of men. Better, she had paved the way for other women journalists.
He was a free spirit, who conducted intelligent, sometimes moving, always interesting interviews with the greatest of this world.
But this bouquet was above all unexpected, because I am far from sharing all the opinions that Mrs.me Bombardier has issued, in recent years, in the pages of the Montreal Journal. The columnist defended with the ardor that she had always been known for what she considered to be the excesses of wokism. It is an ideological current whose existence I do not deny. In my opinion, however, this is not an existential threat, as Denise Bombardier seemed inclined to believe.
It struck me while listening to the one-hour interview she gave to Stéphan Bureau in May, for the podcast Contact. She made terribly pessimistic remarks about a Quebec she no longer recognized. “I had not imagined such a stampede. Never ! she exclaimed. “We are in a very, very dark period in history. And then, this prediction: “It’s heavy, this silence which is going to cause something in the years to come, which is going to be extremely violent, it’s that the silent majority will not be able to bear what it sees. »
I do not subscribe to this dark view of things. I dare to hope that the Quebec of tomorrow will be better than that. And I dare to write it here, the day after Denise Bombardier’s death, because I know that she would have liked to discuss it. That’s what she loved above all, the debate. Polemic. Controversy. Especially not the soft consensuses.
Farewell, Madame B. And thank you for the flowers.