The year 2022 has presented more of a dark side. An often dark horizon from which a few rays of sunshine nevertheless emerged. Our columnists come back to an event that made them believe in it and another that discouraged them.
One thing that made me hope
PHOTO MARTIN TREMBLAY, PRESS ARCHIVES
Adib Alkhalidey
Quebecers Tabarnak by Adib Alkhalidey
In his show, Adib Alkhalidey skilfully plays with words as much to make very basic jokes as to launch sentences that make you think. “Laughing is the consequence of the miracle of democracy,” he says. Alkhalidey describes himself as a tightrope walker on the thin line between decency and indecency. He leads his story masterfully, taking many detours, increasingly funny and absurd. It’s not a frontal or overly political show. Cookie jokes are the pretext for parables and metaphors about the privilege of living here, in peace and freedom. He talks about the way people look at him since he was little, the times when they told him “go back to your country”. But it’s not a show about what divides us. It’s a show about what unites us.
One thing that made me despair
PHOTO SCANPIX DENMARK, REUTERS
Salman Rushdie
The attempted assassination of Salman Rushdie
What many had feared for 33 years happened last August. The author of satanic verses, Salman Rushdie, 75, was attacked and stabbed several times by a 24-year-old man while on stage before a literary conference. Rushdie was in Chautauqua, a small town in upstate New York, to discuss in front of some 4,000 spectators the status of the United States as a haven for exiled writers and artists at risk of persecution. Sad irony. This attack, inspired by a 1989 fatwa by Ayatollah Khomeini, caused Rushdie to lose the use of one hand and one eye. This assassination attempt was not only directed against a free man and a courageous writer, but also against art and freedom of expression.
One thing that made me hope
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
The crowd at one of Stromae’s shows at the Bell Center last November
Rediscovering that art is vital
Since the beginning of the year, the return of the public to performance halls has been gradual. While waiting to return to pre-pandemic cruising speed, I console myself by discovering that, deprived of large swaths of art and culture, Quebecers have found new ways to feed their brains. Reading, audiobooks, radio and TV listening, closed-circuit television shows, all came to our rescue before the big reboot last spring. This experience showed me that human beings cannot do without the work of creators. Art is an essential nutrient for its development and survival.
One thing that made me despair
PHOTO SPENCER COLBY, THE CANADIAN PRESS ARCHIVES
Catherine Tait, CEO of Radio-Canada
The persistence of “Quebec bashing”
The movement which tends to increase the place of minority groups in all spheres of society, particularly in the world of the arts and communications, is desired by a large majority of the population. It’s hard to be against virtue. But I deplore the fact that, at the same time, francophones are being made to lose this status which is still theirs. The comments reported by the office of Catherine Tait, CEO of Radio-Canada, according to which “the conversation on racism is not as advanced in Quebec” mark the year 2022 with a red iron. There is something of “you, we have heard enough of you” in these offensive and thoughtless words.
One thing that made me hope
PHOTO ARCHIVE REUTERS
Annie Ernaux, Nobel laureate in literature
The Nobel to Annie Ernaux
The bettors bet on Houellebecq, it was Ernaux who won the Nobel Prize for Literature. She is the first French woman of letters to receive this prize, which has a worldwide resonance, while France has been particularly celebrated by the Nobel in its history, but mainly for its male writers. This land of literature where the Patrick Poivre d’Arvor scandal shows all that is disgusting in the Parisian literary milieu and where misogynists cry foul in the face of this recognition… In this context, the Nobel to Annie Ernaux will have been my lighthouse at night.
One thing that made me despair
PHOTO STÉPHANE MAHÉ, ARCHIVES REUTERS
Demonstration in Paris denouncing galloping inflation and government inaction against the climate crisis, attended by left-wing political figures, including the leader of insubordinate France, Jean-Luc Mélenchon (center), on October 12
The ecological and economic crisis
Where to start ? Our societies have become cut throats, I wonder every day how we will be able to hold on if people cannot arrive, whether it is a question of having a roof or paying for the grocery basket, that against the background of the climate crisis which will continue to upset everything. Fortunately, there are the arts to keep us together a little, to make us think about our time. It’s not yet back to how it was before the pandemic, but it’s never stopped, even at the worst of the lows.