Taking the pretext of appointments to the Order of Arts and Letters of Quebec, The duty takes you into the imagination of men and women whose work, exemplary in several respects, contributes to promoting culture.
In the living room of a large, bright house where the spring sun shines in front of a number of tulips, Linda Gaboriau talks to me about the blooms of her life, starting with her translations. She knew how to transplant into her mother tongue, English, the works of Michel Marc Bouchard, Marie-Claire Blais, Normand Chaurette, Michel Tremblay, without forgetting those of Gratien Gélinas, Wajdi Mouawad, Pierre Morency, Larry Tremblay and several others. After working for a long time as a cultural journalist – on radio, television, in the written press – she has translated more than 125 books to date.
She would be entitled to fatigue. But no. It’s not his type. For almost half a century, Linda Gaboriau has practiced the almost daily exercise of the accuracy required by the profession of translator. “This morning, I was with Michel Tremblay, in his Desrosiers Diaspora. With each book by Tremblay that I translate, I deepen, in one way or another, my relationship to Quebec culture. I love that. » Linda Gaboriau is loaded with experiences, with memory. Serene and calm, she stares at you with her gentle face, as if to better put time on hold.
“What you need to know as a translator is what you don’t know. And in French, in Quebecois, I know how to recognize what I don’t know. » From there, she strives to follow the flow of the text to reach the thoughts of its author. ” Everything’s in the details. I love the lace of the translation. »
From Michel Tremblay, she first translated a short extract from Sisters-in-law, to give CBC listeners an overview. Her real career as a translator will come later, when she is entrusted, because of her feminist commitment, because she is a theater critic at The Gazette also, the translation of The witches’ ship, this punchy play presented at the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde in 1975, International Women’s Year.
Montreal rather than Boston
In 1963, when she arrived in Quebec as a student, her name was Linda Johnson. Where is she from ? “I came from Boston. In less than six hours of driving, I happily discovered that in Montreal, I could find myself in another world entirely. A perfectly autonomous, different world, with its thinkers, its newspapers, its artists, its radio, its television… That appealed to me. Cultural identity was mixed with political commitment. There was a horizon, a common political project. I was not. » Everyone met to talk, she said.
Before arriving in Montreal, she had learned French in an American college in the heart of an upscale suburb of Boston. “Our teacher made us read Camus, Rabelais… She taught us this language, while opening a window on the culture. » In this New England, does she have links with the French Canadians who took root there, around the factories, to serve as cheap labor? ” Absolutely not. But I realized, belatedly, that my father, upon his return from the war, had soldier friends, one of whom was called “Bolio” and the other, “Dimers”. Beaulieu and Demers! »
She will first study in Germany. Then, she stayed in Paris, where she attended the Sorbonne for a while as a free student. “I began to be interested in the status of women in society. » In Ohio, in Oxford, she is a student at Western College for Women. Back in Boston, she worked at Radcliffe College, a women’s institution within the fold of Harvard. There she met the writer Anne Sexton, became interested in the feminist thought of Tillie Olsen, and spent a lot of time in the company of the activist and professor Elizabeth Barker. “She almost adopted me! »
His plan will soon be to study literature at McGill. “I chose French. Perhaps because of the way it had been taught to me, in connection with literature. » She became friends with Irene Kon. This left-wing activist opens up a whole world to him. “She had been close to the Dr Norman Bethune, left-wing movements. »
At McGill, under the supervision of Jean Éthier-Blais, Linda Gaboriau dives with enchantment into the tumultuous waters of Memories from beyond the grave de Chateaubriand, while being passionate about a movement on the fringes of the Surrealists. “I loved it! Without my studies at McGill, I would not have discovered my deep love for French, for Quebec. And I wouldn’t have stayed here. »
Of Playboy to the counterculture
In 1966, to cut herself off once and for all from the world of Boston, she married the painter Pierre Gaboriau. “I especially embraced the world of the arts, of artists, of bohemianism. » Son of the caricaturist Robert LaPalme, this gifted young man with whom she united was acclaimed by Salvador Dalí. But it didn’t take long for Pierre Gaboriau to run aground and fall apart. From him, she will keep her artist name: Gaboriau.
“Nothing was going right anymore. For a year, imagine, his motorcycle to be repaired was in our bathtub… We needed money. We had to eat. » Aware of her advantageous physique, Linda Gaboriau will appear for auditions launched by Playboy. The magazine intends to open a club in Montreal on the occasion of Expo 67. “It was Keith, Hugh Hefner’s brother, who was doing the auditions. Believe it or not, during my job interview, all that was discussed was modern dance! Keith Hefner was, like me, passionate about it. I was then dancing with the Ballets Modernes. I followed the work of Hugo Romero and Jerome Robbins. I loved Aaron Copland. »
At the club’s inauguration, she chats, dressed as Playboy Bunnyof his thesis devoted to the parasurrealist group of the Grand Jeu with the journalist Robert Fullford, then attached to the Toronto Star. Under the name Natacha, she walks the upper floor of the establishment on her high heels. “It was a very special world, the Playboy Club. It could of course be studied from a feminist perspective, as Gloria Steinem did. For my part, I have never received any advances or gifts there. I always attracted Woody Allen-style profiles among my clients. »
After a few months, seeing herself with her bunny ears, she decides that her life must change. She’s going to separate. An activist against the war in Vietnam, she shelters in her home, in her small apartment, an American deserter. At this time, the photographer Guy Borremans took sublime photographs of her which occupy a special place in his work.
In 1973, Linda Gaboriau powerfully testified, in front of Mireille Dansereau’s camera, about her situation regarding motherhood, but also about the place given to her as a woman in society, and her relationships with men. This makes for a landmark film: I’m getting married, I’m not getting married.
“I had decided to raise my daughter alone. » She went to Kenya for a while with him, after having stayed in Wales. It was only a few years after the birth of her daughter that she married the father. She hesitates to speak today about the columnist and politician Nick Auf der Maur. “I know Nick is important to the history of Montreal. By the time I knew him, Nick already had a reputation as a boulevardier. He was very cultured, very left-wing too. He took care of Last Post, an alternative magazine. » In October 1970, Nick Auf der Maur was among the intellectuals imprisoned under the War Measures Act. “Afterwards, his positions evolved much further to the right. » Their daughter, bassist Melissa Auf der Maur, is known for having played with Courtney Love, the Smashing Pumpkins as well as Rufus Wainwright, her childhood friend.
Perplexed
For the station CKGM, the ancestor of CHOM-FM, Linda Gaboriau will be the first female DJ. “I interviewed Frank Zappa at the time. The counterculture was gaining strength. She used music a lot. It is for this reason that Jean Basile came to get me so that I could join the gang of Stranglehold. »
On the wall of his office, set up in a basement thanks to the talents of his architect son, the light bathes a large photo of the magazine strip. “Like the parasurrealist movements that I studied at university, Stranglehold was interested in oriental mysticism, in states altered by drugs. »
Society has changed. “In the referendums in 1980 and 1995, I voted Yes. Would I vote Yes again? » The identity politics now in force in the Quebec world leaves her perplexed. She wonders where the collective project went.
“The attitude of the Legault government, towards universities in particular, worries me. I understand that in Quebec we do not have to finance the studies of foreigners. But if our universities had not been so open to the world when I arrived, I would never have stayed here, I would never have embraced Quebec as I did. I will not be there. And that goes for others besides me. »
The great flower of his life was Hervé de Fontenay, poet, professor and administrator. She is inconsolable about his disappearance. “Hervé had roughly the same background as me. In Quebec, he campaigned for the French language. He was in favor of French McGill. He came from somewhere else. And like him, it is here, in Quebec, that I will be buried. »