On the terrace with Jean-Philippe Pleau | “It’s as if a part of the Quiet Revolution was not finished!”

This summer, our journalists spend time each week on a terrace with a personality for a friendly discussion. Ariane Krol sat down with Jean-Philippe Pleau to talk about the Quebecers who recognized themselves, or not, in her journey as a class defector.

“The phrase that comes up most often is: ‘I recognized myself so much in your story!’”, summarizes Jean-Philippe Pleau.

It’s the end of June, and it’s already been almost three months since his Rue Duplessis – My Little Darkness has arrived in bookstores. Yet, the testimonies continue to flow.

“Last week, in an independent bookstore in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, it was a book signing session, not even a talk, and it was full. People aged 65, who come to tell me: ‘It’s by reading Duplessis that I was able to become aware of what happened.” A man who starts to cry in my arms…,” he says, visibly touched. “I feel immensely privileged.”

The sociologist met us on the terrace of Station W, a café set up in the former Angus Shops, which once employed thousands of workers.

Coming from a working-class background with little education, Jean-Philippe Pleau once thought his place was in a shop. That was before he went to CEGEP and discovered sociology. This discipline led him to a master’s degree and, by some devious paths, to the microphones of Radio-Canada. A rocky path, strewn with small humiliations, and which distanced him from his original environment, he recounts in Duplessis Street.

“I felt like I was speaking to young people my age, 47, and to younger people. Those aged 60 and over are an audience I hadn’t thought of, but now it seems obvious to me because they took part in the Quiet Revolution: they came from that movement.”

His perspective as a class defector, who chose “to flee and reinvent himself against [son] “original environment”, however, is not unanimous.

Hundreds of thousands of Quebecers have completed educations that their parents did not have access to, and have gained in comfort and ease. The Quiet Revolution also greatly facilitated these transfers from one economic class to another. And not all of them have come out of it traumatized. For many, it is almost a banality.

“Each story is unique, but at the time of the Quiet Revolution, there was a collective trail: the movement was underway, we were heading that way,” recalls Pleau.

Someone who arrives at CEGEP or university when their parents did not attend these places “does not have the codes,” he says.

“I had never heard of the word sociology. I had never been in a lecture hall with 250 people. I was quickly made aware that there were words in my mouth that were curious.” Like the famous “anishquadate,” his father’s version of the expression “to come until date,” which he was asked at university if was an Innu word…

“It created shame.”

Readers who say they recognize themselves in his story are not only 88 or 47 years old, but also 18 years old, Pleau points out. If the issue is still relevant, why do we hear so little about it?

There is, however, “a movement,” the sociologist argues, citing defector authors, both in France (Annie Ernaux, Édouard Louis, Didier Eribon, Pierre Bourdieu) and in Quebec (Caroline Dawson, Akim Gagnon, Benoît Jodoin, Mélanie Michaud, Fernand Dumont).

Although he sees himself as “one case among others”, he wants his book to have “political value” and is thinking about its sequel.

“My story has been told and I’m not going to drag it out. What interests me in the “sequel” is to give public value to all these testimonies. It’s embryonic, but I have in mind to do something a bit choral, perhaps by declining one or two characters.”

While waiting for this sequel, for which he has not given himself a timetable, he will record Duplessis Street in audiobook for Radio-Canada. Production is planned for the fall, for broadcast at the end of the year or in early 2025.

“In the word defector, there is the idea of ​​an escape, and the idea of ​​constituting oneself against one’s original environment. But I think we should not stop there. There is something beautiful to be learned from all stories, it depends on how we look at them.”