The port of a queen and the smile of Mona Lisa. Basically, that was it… Not to mention this discreet charm and an extraordinary intelligence. In recent years, I have often said of Nicole Boily that she was easy to like. Embracing life broadly, she loved her people beyond measure. She was my valued friend and mentor. In her lived a visionary spirit and a great reserve. No doubt she had modesty as an ethic.
Far from those who flaunt their achievements, Nicole Boily was, for 50 years, an immense builder of contemporary Quebec… without it being too well known or adequately underlined. Although she often denied it, I think she would have appreciated more recognition. Nicole Boily belongs to this generation of women in their eighties who gave birth to whole sections of today’s society and, all her life, she embodied real values of social justice.
She has worked tirelessly on both sides of the road, that is to say with decision-makers as much as with civil society and associations. She tried to bring them together, to make them respect each other. She was, in turn, an activist for community and social development – an environment in which she valued her in-depth knowledge of the realities of citizens – and a high-level manager at the City of Montreal and the Government of Quebec.
She fought for public schools in the 1970s and for popular education for four decades. She interceded in high places for the rights of women and the well-being of families…and put structures in place to promote the common good. Nicole was a feminist of action, determined to fight the innumerable precariousness which is the lot of women.
We became friends in 2010, after the consecutive deaths of her husband and my ex-husband. Political scientist Robert Boily for her, filmmaker Marcel Simard for me. The fathers of our only children. Death sometimes creates marvelous connections.
Without knowing it, we were doubly close, in Outremont as in Frelighsburg. I had interviewed her at conferences and had written up a speech or two that she gave. For me, she was first and foremost Madame Boily, the one who held the reins of the Fédération des femmes du Québec in the 1970s, the one who chaired the Family and Childhood Council of Quebec and the first Council of Montrealers, in particular.
She is the true mother of the CPE network of which Quebec is justly proud. Chief of staff for Pauline Marois for three years, between 1980 and 1983, she was able to federate the groupings of popular daycare centers already established in large cities. She was able to convince them of the need for the State to establish a national network of daycare centers in partnership with them. In 1995, she accepted Pauline Marois’ request “to do everything to ensure that the CPE network is a success”. We owe him tons of applause.
I never thought I could call her Nicole one day. It took me a year to stop being formal. Then we experienced the best and the worst of an active and luminous end of life.
The bone cancer that took her, Nicole Boily never chose to see it as part of herself. He wanted to dominate her, she ignored him. Her priority was to remain active and useful to her society. She was until the end. Two months before her death, she still sat on the board of directors of the Ateliers d’éducation populaire du Plateau. When she felt that it was declining too quickly, a few days before her death, she asked for medical assistance in dying. It was amazing to see what energy she was able to deploy to avoid being reduced to the status of a seriously ill person.
Quebec went dark on April 20. Nicole bowed out at home, as she wished. For me, the world has become a bit empty.
There are beings who never sought the light, but who paved the way for so many others after them. Nicole Boily is one of them. When we reflect on the career of this masterful woman, it is the extent of her range of action that is striking. She had always known that to change the world, women had to get involved and be heard and respected.
Long-term feminist, high-calibre manager and woman of action, in love with Quebec, but often discouraged by current identity abuses, Nicole Boily has offered the best part of herself to build a healthier, fairer, more balanced in its power relations.
Her presence in the world, warm and loving, will be sorely missed by all those who crossed her path…
A commemoration is scheduled for Friday, May 27 starting at 3 p.m. at the Alfred Dallaire Memoria, boul. Saint-Laurent, in Montreal. Testimonies will be heard starting at 6 p.m., then, the next day, at Frelighsburg City Hall, starting at 3 p.m.