I treated myself to a few days of vacation and had the good idea of slipping Guy Fournier’s autobiography into my suitcase, Never two without me, written in collaboration with Pierre Huet. Let’s cut to the chase: I devoured this!
Made up of short chapters offered in an organized disorder, the book casts a wide net. It reflects Fournier’s plural personality. This man of culture is both an incorrigible womanizer and an eternal romantic, an ultra-sensitive and provocative being, an artist at heart and a bureaucrat capable of writing serious reports.
From his childhood in the Eastern Townships, in the 1930s (yes, he knew horses and oil lamps), through his first crushes, to a not always wise old age, Fournier speaks freely, sometimes even a little too much. Some passages are difficult, you have been warned.
I was obviously very interested in the period when he was boss of the News writer from Trois-Rivières while his twin brother Claude (whom is discussed extensively) works at The gallery from Sherbrooke. We learned that Guy Fournier had to report every Friday to Prime Minister Maurice Duplessis. It should be noted that at the same time, journalists who covered municipal councils discreetly received $2 after each session. We’ll come back for ethics.
The relationship between the two men gets out of hand when Fournier gets in the way of the “boss”. Cavalierly dismissed, the journalist promises his wife to spit on Duplessis’ grave when he dies. Guy Fournier will keep his promise.
As you can imagine, women occupy a large place in this book. There are the “officials”: Louise, the mother of her two sons, who committed suicide after entrusting custody of the boys to the father, Aimée Danis, a director and producer, Louise Deschâtelets, to whom Guy Fournier offers superlatives , and Alba, a Lebanese woman who showed him all the colors. Today, there is Maryse, her rock from Gibraltar.
And then there are all the others that Fournier courted for the purest pleasure of seducing. We learn that he “caught his feet” at Denise Bombardier’s house. As for the many other conquests, we lose count. And he is sometimes the reason (he cheated on his first wife during their honeymoon).
But to perceive Guy Fournier only as the one who sought to enrich his hunting list would be simplistic. You have to read the chapters where he talks about the sincere and deep friendships he had with Anne Hébert and Judith Jasmin.
It would be too long to list everything this man has accomplished professionally (author, producer, consultant, negotiator, etc.). But this work shows the great influence he had on the media industry.
Of The Surprise Box until the Duval Heirs, his career as an author is rich and varied. In astonishing frankness, he describes the difficult climate which reigned on the set of Never two without you. We learn that Jean Besré (whose character was inspired by the chronicles that Guy Fournier wrote in Outlook) and Angèle Coutu couldn’t get away from each other.
This disagreement contrasts with the relationship that Guy Fournier and Louise Deschâtelets had on the set of My love, my love in the mid-1990s.
A couple for years, the two co-hosts separated just before the start of the season. The public saw none of this.
Guy Fournier has never been afraid to question himself (one evening when he realized that he had made too many jokes about “fifs”, he decided to create two gay characters in Never two without you). He was never afraid to say things frankly and take a stand (during the directors’ strike of 1958, he hit the car of the president of Radio-Canada with a baseball bat), even if it made him feel lose feathers.
When he set up Télévision Quatre-Saisons in 1986, he set himself the objective of promoting the place of women and visible minorities. This earned him a highly racist comment from the channel’s big boss, Jean Pouliot, who did not appreciate the presence of Dany Laferrière on his airwaves.
There are several men in Guy Fournier. He doesn’t ask us to choose one. Nor does He ask us to love one. But if we had to make these choices, I bet he would be very happy about it.
In a previous version of this column, we wrote that the author attributed racist remarks to Robert L’Herbier. It is rather Jean Pouliot. Our apologies.
The famous passage to Everybody talks about it
It is at the very end of the book that Guy Fournier recounts the event which forced him to leave the presidency of the board of directors of CBC/Radio-Canada. I’m talking about his passage to Everybody talks about itSeptember 17, 2006.
It all started with a call from Pascal Beausoleil, a host from CHOQ-FM, a community radio station in Toronto, who wanted to talk with Guy Fournier about the book. History and oddities of excrement (Fournier had spoken about it two years earlier on Julie Snyder’s show) and the enjoyment of defecation.
After a few minutes of this “insignificant chatter”, Fournier puts an end to the conversation. The interview is recorded. Guy Fournier claims today that he did not know it.
A few weeks later, Guy A. Lepage invited him onto his set, telling him, again according to Guy Fournier, that he wanted to return to a “humor column” published in 7 days (a Lebanese association had filed a $250,000 lawsuit against Guy Fournier who had written that a law allowed Lebanese people to have sexual relations with female animals), but also to talk about the future of Radio-Canada.
But during the broadcast, an excerpt of the exchange that Fournier had with Beausoleil is played. The guests on the set (Thierry Ardisson, Serge Lama) are fooling around. Guy Fournier is liquefying before our eyes.
“When Lepage puts an end to the ordeal and asks me what I think of the evening with a Machiavellian smile that says a lot about the stunt he has just pulled off, I can’t utter a single word. I’m knocked out,” he wrote.
Guy Fournier had to resign from the board of Radio-Canada. “Years after this sad appearance at TLMEP, I still wonder if there was no collusion to push me to resign,” he adds in the book.
This event was extremely painful for Guy Fournier who had suicidal thoughts. “I didn’t think I would recover from this unfortunate episode,” he said.
Never two without me
Les Éditions du Journal
440 pages