Wife of the trade unionist and essayist Pierre Vadeboncoeur, Marie Gaboury died on July 18 at the venerable age of 103. She was in the line of Marie-Anne Gaboury, the grandmother of Louis Riel.
This strong woman, a social worker by profession, had an extraordinary character. As he once wrote, Vadeboncoeur was going nowhere before meeting her at the dawn of his 30th birthday, in the late 1940s. From that moment on, the man who would become one of the most important Quebec essayists from the 1960s onwards, had finally found a place and a cause that would give meaning to his life: the defense of workers at the Confédération des travailleurs catholiques du Canada (CTCC), which would become, at the turn of the Quiet Revolution, the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN).
While Vadeboncoeur negotiated, led strikes, traveled across Quebec, and completed his literary work, Marie held the fort where five children demanded all of his attention. Always, when he spoke of her, he had the same spark in his eyes as a teenager who believes he has found the woman of his life. After more than 60 years together, he still had that spark.
In nearly 150 pages published in 1985 under the title The absencethe writer in love describes how he recreates the beloved in his imagination. “In speaking to you of your physical grace, to represent it I suggested with my hand a line that immediately became rare and precious. To this end I traced in space a barely material motif towards which the emotion was freely directed. It was for you that this pleasure was intended and it took on an exceptional quality because of this detour through a sign of the beauty in question.”
Throughout his life, she was both his muse and his muse. His inspiration. The one he could rely on. She knew how to take care of him, so to speak. A few days before Vadeboncoeur’s death in 2010, I did an hour-long interview with him on Radio Ville-Marie. She accompanied him. I remember this touching sentence she said to him during a musical break: “Dad, your sentences are too long…” And he nodded.
She would sometimes call me to ask me to call Pierre, telling me that he was a little depressed these days. One great pleasure I gave Marie was to suggest to the CSN that the Pierre-Vadeboncoeur Prize be created in 2011. Since then, this prize, which aims to reward a notable essay on political, economic or social issues, has been awarded thirteen times to Quebec authors, including those found in The dutysuch as, among others, Jean-François Nadeau, Normand Baillargeon, Yvon Rivard, Josée Boileau, Mathieu Bélisle, Yvan Lamonde, Aurélie Lanctôt. Until recent years, Marie made it a point to attend the award ceremony in person, happy that the name and memory of Pierre Vadeboncoeur always remained present at the CSN.
I have a few manuscripts of Vadeboncoeur. It is difficult to imagine how Marie managed to give meaning to all these crossed-out words, these returns on the back, these hieroglyphs, by transcribing them with a typewriter, then later with a computer. There must have been something in her like the patience of a Benedictine.
It has often occurred to me to draw a parallel between the destinies of Louis Aragon and Pierre Vadeboncoeur. One found a place of solidarity and combat in the French Communist Party, the other in trade unionism at the CTCC. But for both, one woman counted more than anything: Elsa Triolet for Aragon, Marie Gaboury for Vadeboncoeur. “Your eyes are so deep that I lose my memory there,” wrote Aragon. “The expectation of your eyes while I spoke to you about them, their immobility which was a readiness for homage…” wrote Vadeboncoeur. I do not know if there would have been Aragon without Elsa, who has already said that the writer sublimated her in his texts and offered a poeticized, almost unreal image of her.
But I know that if there had not been Marie Gaboury, there would not have been Pierre Vadeboncoeur.