(Rouyn-Noranda) Where are we here? “In paradise,” replies Richard Desjardins, seated in the kitchen of his “camp”, one Sunday afternoon in May. “It’s my own paradise, in the woods, not far from Rouyn, in the middle of the boreal forest. I arrived here 70 years ago. »
Some people call the monster chalet a “camp”, with a double garage and a 12-seater spa in which they relax in the summer. Richard Desjardins’ camp is a real camp, built at the end of a winding forest path like a roller coaster, with trees on each side and more.
Inside, the bare minimum: a bed, a table, a chair covered with a white towel on which sits a guitar, with which the owner of the place writes songs which will perhaps one day result in a new album, there has hope. Toilet reading: a dog-eared copy of the Settler’s Book or How to settle on land for almost nothing.
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
Richard Desjardins, interviewed in his camp
And at the back of the room, a door opening onto a quay, which itself overlooks Lake Vaudray, which itself opens onto eternity.
Richard Desjardins was 6 years old when his father, a forestry operations superintendent, took his entire family into this wood so dense that after a first day there, the boy, now 76 years old, had not yet noticed that behind all its trees hide one of the most beautiful lakes in Abitibi.
The aspiring singer still knows nothing about the secrets of wood. Because despite what his legendary defense of the forest might lead you to believe, Richard Desjardins could not have grown up in an environment more different from this immaculate nature.
His childhood home was located, “below the smoke,” about 500 meters from the copper mine around which Noranda was founded. Where the Horne Foundry is still located, that of the arsenic emissions because of which Rouyn-Noranda often slips into the news.
“The fire caught”
However, it was only around forty years later, “around 1993, 1994”, that his awareness of the precariousness of our forests was born, the first bud of what would lead in 1999 to the creation of the shocking documentary The boreal errorwhich celebrates its 25e birthday.
One day, her father invites her to come and see with his own eyes what is going on not far away, five or six kilometers from the camp, where a harvester is felling everything in its path. “It was as if they were building an international airport,” Desjardins did not forget, still stunned. “There was nothing left. »
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
Richard Desjardins during the recording of the episode
It will eventually attract the attention of the man behind the machine. “I remember it very well,” he says with his eye for detail that kills. “He had his headphones on, and when he took them off, it was playing Led Zeppelin on board. » Not from Desjardins.
“Just to tell you that at the bottom of the hill, there is a stream and you are going into it,” Richard will warn him. “It’s one of the most important streams that feeds the lake where I have my camp. » Implacably nonchalant response from the man behind the machine: “Well, I’ll know when I’m inside. » Anger intact in Desjardins’ eyes. “In my head, the fire took hold. » But not the same kind of fire as in A nice big slow.
When questioning representatives of the government and the forestry industry, “the poverty of the answers shocked us,” he emphasizes about the filming of The boreal errora film that will shake all of Quebec.
A quarter of a century later, the victories of Action boréale, the organization founded in the wake of the documentary, are real: the proportion of protected areas in Abitibi-Témiscamingue increased from 0.6% in 2000 to 9.4% in 2015.
But its co-founder calls for vigilance and, as a man who is not unaware of the obliterating power of words, observes that “taking a stem”, as we prefer to say today, is still cutting down a tree. “Forest companies, if they could harvest the entire Abitibi forest in one night with the same machine, they wouldn’t bother. »
“That wasn’t said”
Richard Desjardins was 14, 15 years old when one evening, at the college where he was studying, Monique Leyrac arrived from a big visit. “She started singing and I fell under her spell. A state of shock,” he remembers.
When she did The Manikoutai, I said to myself: “If there is a way, this is what I would like to do in life, write songs of this caliber. »
Richard Desjardins
Since then, Richard Desjardins has certainly written at least a few tunes of this caliber, including several contained on Do you love me? (1990), his masterpiece second album which has just received a vinyl reissue.
Among the big caliber of this legendary record: Nataq, a crossing of continents in the form of an epic poem and in alexandrines. How many hours at the stake to clear so much beauty? About three years. And The good guy, She ? Only four days of work. Richard laughs. “The most popular ones, which make me earn my living, were written in one go. »
As for the title song, Desjardins harvested the raw material by simply listening. “‘Do you love me?’ a guy wouldn’t say that back in the day,” he remembers. A man considered the love of a woman as something that went without saying.
“But I heard it often. It was in the same way that I collected my stock, listening to the world talk, and I noticed how a man could fall in love with a woman without asking her too many questions. I said to myself: OK, I’m going to go all out, he’s going to ask questions: “Why do you love me moé? You might like another one!” That’s the question. And it is universal. »
Three quotes from our interview
About the summer 2023 wildfires
“Last summer, I said to myself: ‘If the fire breaks out, where do I get out? There is no getaway.” It was the first time I thought about that. Because the forestry we are doing will increase the number of fires. And for the rest, for the planet, we know it’s all messed up. In The Existence [album de 2011], I’m talking about a man in a sea of tanks. Wherever you go on earth, you are always in a sea of tanks. »
About sponsorship of the cultural sector by mining companies
“They have always tried to have a good image, in relation to the fact that they have contaminated the territory, which is terrible, because they will subsidize the artists, those who project the images of their city. […] They even enter poetry competitions, if necessary. It’s outrageous. It’s a big theatrical mask, the domination of the cultural scenes here. »
About the many characters of bums in his songs
“Rouyn-Noranda was an intense city. There was more money in these cities than elsewhere. You could work easily, make good money. You’re 17, 18 years old, you go out, you go buy some dope, you go listen to rock music. They were all very colorful, very distinct characters. It was wonderful. In Rouyn, in 1960, there were around twenty hotels with around twenty orchestras. We walked from one to the other. It was an extraordinary musical education. The place was music lover. »
Listen to the full episode