Jean-Claude Corbeil is gone, and his departure, which leaves a great void, is regretted by many. Many have already underlined its merits in its public action: close and ongoing participation in the formulation of language laws since the 1970s, management of the OQLF, various local and international representations, not to mention the drafting of the Visual Dictionary.
For my part, I would like to underline his more “private” achievements as a university professor, in his teaching and his supervision of students. I met him when he was giving a master’s seminar, and I was immediately dazzled as one can be at this age by the breadth of vision and the depth of his conceptions of language, as well than by his unwavering ardor in defending not only the varieties of Quebec French, but also the socio-political status of those who speak them. I quickly saw in him my main teacher.
He agreed to direct my work on the phonological description of popular French in Montreal. This meant for him: read everything in fine detail and criticize, suggest avenues for research and additions, encourage me to continue until the end of the program. His intellectual rigor even pushed him to have the university’s Bureau of Statistics verify the validity of my sample and to write an official letter of introduction to the attention of my potential subjects. When necessary, he even defended my work against ill-founded objections from some of his colleagues. And there should be no doubt that he did the same for several other apprentice linguists. For all these reasons, I like since that time to call him in front of me and in front of my colleagues and friends “my favorite supervisor”.
Even recently, I used his influence to get the dictionary management team to accept Usito, from the University of Sherbrooke, a little too cautious on this issue, a necessary innovation in the phonetic transcription system, for which I was responsible. But whatever the circumstances, seeing him again on several occasions over the years has always been a renewed pleasure.
For your loyalty and your constant fidelity to your ideals and your convictions, but also quite simply to your fellow men, Jean-Claude Corbeil, I salute you very low.