To highlight her exceptional career throughout the Francophonie, the Mouvement national des Québécois has just added singer Diane Dufresne to its list of “giants” who have shaped Quebec by awarding her its Artisan prize, Thursday, as the celebrations approach. of Saint John the Baptist.
Posted at 3:00 p.m.
The outstanding figure of Quebec song received her prize from the hands of artist Armand Vaillancourt, who sculpted the work created to mark the occasion. Catherine Major, Lulu Hugues and Pascale Montpetit also paid tribute to him in music at the Théâtre Plaza in Montreal, where the festivities of the 188and National Day edition.
Diane Dufresne participated in many Saint-Jean celebrations during her prolific career, notably at the Olympic Stadium in 1977, alongside a certain Félix Leclerc. In 2020, she also took part in the show All of Quebec in unison, presented on television in full confinement. The 77-year-old singer has never hesitated to show her attachment to Quebec, even in France, where she has always sung “in Quebec”. On June 24, 1980, she took the stage at the Palace in Paris, wearing a bare bodice dress with a fleur-de-lis on the left breast. “I wore a fleur-de-lis on my breasts because I wanted to wear it as close to my heart as possible,” she said at the time.
With this award, Diane Dufresne joins a select club of remarkable artists that includes Gilles Vigneault, Paul Piché, Les Cowboys Fringants, Ginette Reno, Robert Charlebois, Judi Richards and Yvon Deschamps.
This year, Marc Labrèche will be the spokesperson for the Saint-Jean celebrations, which will take place on the theme of “the language of a thousand accents”. “In June, after two years of absence, we finally meet again,” said Thérèse David, president of the Mouvement national des Québécois, in a press release. The desire to walk around our regions has returned, to tell stories, chat and celebrate our talk assumed. More than 600 festivals offer in 2022 a program for all tastes. »
The details of the programming for the June 23 and 24 festivities will be announced gradually by June 2. Thursday, the organizers announced that Pépé and his guitar and Marco Calliari will perform the first part of the June 23 show in Quebec, which will finally be back on the Plains of Abraham.
Parliament in blue
In addition, a multimedia show will be presented on the facade of the Parliament Building in Quebec City for National Day, from June 18 to 22 and 24. The show BLUE: Quebec under the stars, designed by the firm TKNL, will offer a canoe trip through the history of Quebec, and will feature “its culture, its territory, the people who have marked and shaped it,” the government announced Thursday. More than 10,000 people will be able to attend the 20-minute show free of charge, which will be narrated by France Castel.