Portraits of Felix | The Press

Parks, schools, streets, avenues, a highway, a statue, a trophy, the name of Félix Leclerc still resonates throughout Quebec. It marks the territory as it marked minds and hearts. Felix Leclerc and us, a collection of interviews conducted by Monique Giroux and Pierre Gince, intends to perpetuate his memory in a different way: through the testimonies of people who, barring exceptions, knew him. A composite portrait at the height of a man.

Alexandre Vigneault
The Press

“Memory is cultivated,” says Monique Giroux. It is not because the most prestigious award for Quebec song bears the first name of Félix Leclerc that his work will continue to survive him as if by magic. We must talk about it, make it heard and remember the important step he took in French song and tell the man he was, believes the host and designer.

From where Felix Leclerc and us, a collection of interviews with 40 people, mostly from the artistic world. “The goal was to describe him through people who knew him,” she sums up. Thus, throughout the pages, Félix is ​​told by Gilles Vigneault, Françoise Canetti, Robert Charlebois, Diane Dufresne, Yves Duteil, Jean-Pierre Ferland, Louise Forestier, Nana Mouskouri, Stéphane Venne and many others, without forgetting his three children: Martin, Nathalie and Francis.

The collection paints the portrait of a reserved man, who imposes by his presence and his voice, and of an artist known for his songs and his tales, but who would have liked his plays to be recognized. Of a loner who gladly told his guests to park by placing the front of the car facing the exit… so that they could leave more quickly!

“This anecdote describes the character well, believes Monique Giroux. He became known in spite of himself. »

His job ? His art ? His aura? He was aware of his status, but didn’t care much about it. His son, the director Francis Leclerc, also specifies that his father never boasted of having sung in front of 100,000 people. Nor to have known glory in France. Nor to be a pillar of Quebec culture. He didn’t talk about any of that.

It was only when he entered secondary school, seeing the way his classmates’ parents looked at his father, that he became aware of his celebrity. Otherwise, for him, he was a dad who spent a lot of time at home, played the guitar and locked himself up to write in a room very close to his childhood bedroom.

The big story by the small

One of the interests of the collection is its intimate nature. Félix’s career is remembered, of course. It is about his debut at Trois Baudets, in Paris, at the invitation of Jacques Canetti, and the immense success he enjoyed in France during the 1950s. It is also about the honors that were made to him , of his most outstanding shows, of the influence he had on Vigneault, Ferland and Charlebois, but also on Brassens, Brel or Hugues Aufray. However, this book is not a hagiography: the aura and the mark left by Félix go first through the memories, the anecdotes and the daily life told by the interviewees.

In this regard, Monique Giroux and Pierre Gince (to whom we owe similar works devoted to Robert Bourassa and René Lévesque) were very skilful. They orchestrate each other’s memories in such a way as to paint a general portrait of the man: reserved in public, but very funny in private, the type not to hesitate to embellish the real thing to make it more entertaining. The authors also had the intelligence to let the small contradictions accumulate: if one says of Félix that he was a bit stingy, they do not prevent anyone from calling him generous afterwards. And if anyone says the poet was excited to see so many people on the Plains of Abraham for the show I saw the wolf, the fox, the lionthe other can say that Félix wanted to run away that night…

These differences between the accounts show that the interviewers did not seek to impose a single truth, but to compose a living portrait of Félix. What the format of the collection, presented in the form of questions and answers, also helps to energize.

A founding work

It is perhaps difficult to measure today the impact he had in the 1950s, believes Monique Giroux, and to what extent his work is the foundation of a poetic and culturally significant French song. Félix was out of place: when he landed in France, Tino Rossi and Luis Mariano were at their peak, while in Quebec, there was Private Lebrun, Alys Robi and Monique Leyrac, “who was still singing Spanishades”.

There is a before and an after Felix. Even if his star faded during the 1960s and 1970s, even if those who followed him took other paths.

And it is this “father” that the craftsmen of L’Osstidcho felt the need to “kill” symbolically, despite his heritage, which they still claim.

The animator and designer hopes that this book will give impetus to the memory of Félix and to his work. In schools (“song is an extremely playful form of fiction, poetry and philosophy” that we would benefit from discovering from an early age, she believes) and in cottages. “Each of us has the responsibility to contribute to the survival of our language and our culture,” she says, thinking first of Félix’s work. Let’s all start at home. »

Felix Leclerc and us

Monique Giroux and Pierre Gince

Editions de l’Homme

304 pages