In the land of Gilles Vigneault | The Press

After Natashquan, Route 138 comes to an end to give way to Innu country. The old school of Natashquan, which has become a museum, serves as a pretext to let oneself be lulled by the poetry of Gilles Vigneault and to meet the people of this country to whom the Quebec poet has given life to make them characters larger than life.

GERARD CODEERRE
Author and freelance journalist, Saint-Adolphe-d’Howard

On Natashquan school desks

At the small school in Natashquan, the violin becomes poetry in the dance at Saint-Dilon, the best-known jig in Quebec. We rediscover Charlie the caller who lost his lover and was put in pasture by less fine, but more beautiful than him. We follow the daily life of Caillou-la-Pierre, a character who has become a legend and who earns his living between hunting, fishing, trapping and forestry work. We roam around with Jean du Sud until he finds his storm. We are so bored with Rose-Jeanne while we wait for the men to return to the village.

We relive with Jack Monoloy, a Métis who loved a White woman, the meeting of two solitudes who live in a parallel world and must come to terms with an impossible love.

We finally find ourselves with John Débardeur on the wharf of Natashquan, a place filled with emotion, expectation and nostalgia, where the longshoremen take on the color of their cargo and where visitors breathe the salty air and can still hear , through the talk of the inhabitants of the coast, the accent of the sea.

Not far from the small school, we discover the house of Gilles Vigneault which has taken on the air of the times and, a little further, the house of his father and that of his grandfather called to become museums in their turn. “You don’t often sell your father’s house,” said Gilles Vigneault. We’re not tearing it down either. We let it age. We let it take on the colors of time. »

In Natashquan, my country, it’s winter

The foreigner passing through, who comes to enjoy the tranquility of this corner of the country for a few days, will perhaps be able to get a little idea of ​​what it is like to live to the rhythm of the tides and the seasons and become for a time a poet in his turn. In Natashquan, we take off. In Natashquan, the summer is so short and the winter so long. In Natashquan, even in summer, you can’t forget winter. In Natashquan, winter is not a season, it’s a state of mind, a way of being, a country.

Gilles Vigneault embodies our roots and our identity better than anyone and seems essential when the time comes to celebrate and sing about our country during the Saint-Jean celebrations on June 24.