I know that Paul Houde died of complications following brain surgery, this title might seem indelicate. But Paul Houde’s brain was extraordinary, a UFO, I can’t not talk about Paul’s brain. I can’t think of a better title to cover this tribute column.
With this clarification, I begin…
Paul Houde knew everything.
I’m not saying that to make it look nice, but yes, Paul Houde knew everything. That’s no way to speak. There was a Rain Man side to Paul, his knowledge was infinite in a multitude of areas…
In the fine details of things.
I spoke to Paul Houde every day for six years, 42 weeks a year, when he hosted Quebec now at 98.5 FM. I was his news columnist. Round table at 5:06 p.m., review at 5:15 p.m. and we chatted for about ten minutes.
Paul knew absolutely everything. Aviation, space exploration, Olympics, athletics, hockey, Chicago Blackhawks, weather, solar system, song, politics, history, cinema: we are not talking here about a man with a photographic memory, we are talking about a man whose might have thought he had Google’s algorithm implanted in his brain before Google was born. On the air, I called it “My two-legged Wikipedia.” A polymath.
I have always wondered how Paul Houde’s brain worked, how he managed to store so much knowledge on so many subjects. Paul had always written down the day’s weather in his notebooks, adding details of the day’s news. So there is that. But the thing was, you could ask him for the weather on a given day and…
And he remembered it!
And I’m not talking about the weather last Monday: I’m talking about the weather on a given day years ago.
Like: what was the weather like when your Blackhawks lost in the final to the Canadiens, Paul?
I swear to you: Paul Houde could tell you, from memory, the weather forecast for May 18, 1971. Paul knew All.
There are people who know a lot and let you know it like the bodybuilder who flashes his well-oiled abs on the beach. Not Paul. He would recite world records, hockey statistics, Oscar winners, lunar facts to you as if it were the simplest thing in the world, enjoying your astonishment…
Paul Houde’s media career reflected his passions, his fields of interest, his bulimic curiosity. Radio presenter, yes, radio was his first great love. But also handyman on TV: host of service shows (Every morningon Radio-Canada) or quizzes (The circle at TVA) and absurd columnist with Marc Labrèche (The end of the world is at 7 o’clock, 3600 seconds of ecstasy). As if that wasn’t enough, he played goalkeeper Fern in the film series The Boys…
Paul Houde has always been there – I mean for a lot of people, Paul has always been in the picture. I’m 52 years old and for as long as I can remember, Paul was in the public sphere, I think I heard him for the first time during the Olympic Games, when I was a teenager: I imagine he was describing then athletics, one of his great passions.
Morning man at CFGL, host of the return to 98.5 FM, comic relief on TV, presence in The Boysas comfortable talking about hockey with his BPM Sports gang as he is about life with the little rascals from The day (is still young)on Radio-Canada: for decades, Paul accompanied us and marked thousands of people in a thousand ways…
No wonder today, his sudden death at age 69 is felt for thousands of Quebecers like the death of a loved one. Everyone knew Paul, everyone loved Paul. Tributes have been legion since the announcement of his death.
Everyone loved Paul Houde, especially his colleagues. I have a heartfelt thought for his friends and for his family, of course. But I also have a thought for Thérèse Parisien, Paul’s great accomplice on the air, at 98.5 FM, who was also a friend in life. A thought also for Kathrine Huet, who was much more than a researcher and producer for Paul.
On the air, he was an all-terrain host, capable of “making time” if a guest was slow to materialize on the line, as effective at interviewing a scout leader as a French director passing through Montreal, the witness to a pileup or a minister who had just left a press conference.
Behind the microphone, Paul Houde had a well-assumed frosty side, he could laugh, cavort and imitate, but he could also become serious like Pierre Bruneau: when mad Islamists committed this terrible massacre in Paris on November 13, 2015, Paul stayed on the air all evening, well beyond the scheduled end of his show at 6:30 p.m., interviewing experts and witnesses from the field with admirable tact.
I rarely met him in private, I guessed he was a bit anxious, a mutual friend told me a long time ago that Paul lived with the perpetual fear of running out of work…
He never lacked, of course: at 69, he was still in demand. Solicited, loved, admired.
An anecdote to illustrate his memory, in closing. When I tell you that Paul Houde knew everything, that’s not a way of speaking. One day, someone made me a suggestion (I forget who, I don’t have their memory…): that of asking a very specific trick question to Paul on the air about the Montreal Games in 1976…
So I asked Paul:
“Paul, it seems that you remember the name of the nu-vite who disrupted the closing ceremony of the Montreal Olympic Games in 1976…”
The response came immediately, impossible that he had discreetly asked for a pass on the Google palette: “Michel Leduc! »
But the feat is not that Paul remembered without help the name of a weirdo who squats in a footnote in the history of the 1976 Games, no, the feat is that Paul also remembered… his home address!
How did he know that and how did he remember it, 40 years later?
No idea, it was part of the mysteries of Paul Houde’s wonderful brain.