There was an almost monastic silence in the newspaper’s newsroom. The sun. Nothing unusual for a Sunday evening in August 1997, when regular journalists, even those at the weekend, were taking advantage of their annual vacation.
Posted at 8:15 a.m.
There was only one reporter on duty: me, the supernumerary news item sentry, locked in a windowless listening room where the police scanners constantly crackled. A great summer job, we’ll tell each other, while waiting for university classes to resume in the fall.
At the time, the little new ones “closed” the newspaper, that is to say that they entered the newsroom at the end of the afternoon and picked up all the news that came rolling in until the end of the day. printing – on paper, yes, yes – of the final edition between 11 p.m. and midnight. Basically, it was fires, traffic accidents, bomb threats or, in rare cases, murders.
I have always liked working in the evening and I “closed” The Press for several years thereafter. It was the best school to learn to operate quickly and well.
Back on Sunday, August 10, 1997, the Cessna of Marie-Soleil Tougas and Jean-Claude Lauzon struck a mountain south of Kuujjuaq in the early afternoon, but their deaths were not confirmed until late evening. by the Sûreté du Québec.
In my coffer of miscellaneous facts, I screamed, before landing in panic at the office of the head of the desk: Marie-Soleil Tougas is dead, it can’t be, come on, it’s big, it’s big, It makes no sense, she was only 27, I kinda feel like fainting, what do we do?
It was the first time that a story I was covering shook me so much. As if this tragedy was aimed at a member of my own family. Zoe Cayer in Banana skinJudith Létourneau in ChopSuey, I had grown up with Marie-Soleil Tougas on television. I felt like I knew her personally.
I vividly remembered his time at Fort Boyard where she was screaming in disgust, her hand plunged into a jar filled with sticky bugs: “The mice, what shit are they eating?” she had shouted in a classic moment of nervousness.
I remembered the time she shaved off her beautiful brown hair, on a whim, only to bleach it. I remembered the Griffe d’or, the TV series Jasmineof Rooms in town and its ads for the prevention of AIDS or STDs (that was the name of the time). She was beautiful, Marie-Soleil. She was perfect, bright, talented, funny and endearing. The shock was immense for Quebecers that Sunday, all generations combined.
Not only did the darling of showbiz suddenly disappear, but the general public also discovered at the same time that Marie-Soleil Tougas was dating Jean-Claude Lauzon, 43, the terrible child of Quebec cinema. An unlikely couple – she, the angel, he, the demon – that no one imagined dating.
Go, go, go, you have 20 minutes to write tomorrow’s headline, the head of the desk had then ordered me, who redid his front page in a hurry. The deadline forgave no delay, and I churned out the text at lightning speed, a rush of adrenaline driving through my body. I couldn’t believe the words scrolling across the screen: “Marie-Soleil Tougas and Jean-Claude Lauzon lost their lives when their small plane crashed in Quebec’s Far North”.
These memories came to the surface after watching the documentary Marie-Soleil and Jean-Claude: beyond the stars, that Videotron’s Vrai platform has been offering its subscribers for a week. It only remains to hope that a general public channel of Quebecor (TVA or Moi et cie) recovers this quality production to make it shine more, it is urgent.
The 1h20 film by director Jean-François Poisson (The Order of the Solar Temple) does not expose new facts about the accident, but further explores the stormy relationship between the actress and the creator of Leoloin particular by reading extracts from their respective diaries.
Your heart can only sink when you see again the images of the funeral of Marie-Soleil Tougas, my God, or those of the press conference given by Gaston Lepage and Patrice L’Ecuyer two days after the terrible events. Gaston Lepage and Patrice L’Ecuyer accompanied Marie-Soleil Tougas and Jean-Claude Lauzon on this disastrous fishing trip.
Twenty-five years later, the wound remains acute for those close to Marie-Soleil, including her mother Micheline Bégin and her brother Sébastien Tougas.
The ex-colleague Nathalie Petrowski, whose father, André, had taken Jean-Claude Lauzon under his wing at the end of adolescence, paints a fair and uncompromising portrait of the filmmaker as talented as he is untimely.
Marie-Soleil and Jean-Claude: beyond the stars depicts an era that no longer exists. A time without social networks, without LCN and during which the beautiful Marie-Soleil shone as brightly as a star that was anything but shooting in our hearts.