At this time of year, I always have a bit of carnival nostalgia. In the Caribbean or in New Orleans, where I’ve already celebrated, it’s the big party for weeks while we freeze and snot at home. Fortunately, there is Sophie Fouron who brings a little festive warmth to our homes with the show life is a carnivallaunched on January 20 on TV5.
Few people do feel good TV like Sophie Fouron, a host whose joie de vivre and kindness are contagious. If you have never watched Hold lounge, whose third season begins on February 3, still on TV5, do yourself a favor, because you will see a Quebec that we do not see enough on the small screen. We meet different cultural communities simply by sitting in a hairdressing salon. I laughed and cried every episode. This season, Sophie will discuss with a Jewish wig maker (her team took three years to convince women from the Hasidic community), barbers from Montreal North or Rwandans from Quebec.
Because TV5 is broadcast all over the world, Sophie Fouron is more recognized on the street abroad than in Quebec. She started her career late, in her late thirties, so much so that she has been seen as a new face on TV lately, in her early fifties. “I defy all statistics, agrees the one who also co-hosts the show Back to culture at ARTV. The older I get, the more I work. There’s something very reassuring about that. I feel like I really belong. »
I think we needed these shows and we didn’t know it. Until very recently, television in Quebec was done by white people, for the “native”. When I look at the set of life is a carnivalI tell myself that this is not a program on diversity, it is a program on Quebec today.
Sophie Fouron
This large set type program is ultra friendly and unifying, like Sophie Fouron. Each week, in the company of the collaborators of the edition (Corneille, Tatiana Polevoy, Elkahna Talbi, Kevin Raphaël, Neev, Isabelle Picard and Manuel Tadros), we receive a guest (Boucar Diouf is the first) and we talk about a package things. For example, you will hear Fabien Cloutier recount his curiosity when, as a child, he saw a black man in Beauce for the first time and you will see Marina Orsini smoking shisha, in addition to learning why there are plaster lions in front of the Italian houses, while making a detour to the sukkah of a Jewish family for the Sukkot holiday.
“It’s like a Spanish inn, as if I received my friends at home, explains the facilitator. You come to my house, you tell me about yourself, your experiences, your travels, we go see a voodoo priestess in Laval or play cricket with Pakistanis in the West Island. It’s infinite, the subjects! »
And perfectly consistent with everything she’s done on TV so far. She had to go around the world at least twice for the shows Homeport and To each his own islandbut she is very happy today to make us travel inside Quebec by these people from all walks of life, without straying too far from her boyfriend and his children. It’s in the family, mingling with others, because she was born to a Quebec mother and a Haitian father. “For me, it’s just normal. As a child, I thought everyone had a black parent, you know! This is the legacy of my parents, this openness of mind and heart which, for us, goes without saying. »
Sophie Fouron recently lost her father, Jean-Claude Fouron, who was a great gentleman. A doctor specializing in fetal cardiology at Sainte-Justine Hospital, where he worked until he was 80 years old. It is not without emotion that she speaks of him, her eyes in the water. “He was an exceptional man. He was good at everything. A loving being, so present, a model in his relationship with my mother. He was truly the patriarch. When he died, we heard testimonies from all over the world, because he really made Sainte-Justine shine. »
A question of generation no doubt, we did not talk about racism at the Fouron table, even if Sophie is well aware that her father must have lived through it in his life. She also believes, without blame, that it is a discussion that she missed, because it catches up with her today, when the subject is mentioned.
When I was a teenager, difference wasn’t celebrated that much. There is now a big movement, even a revolution, and that’s what we want: to celebrate our differences.
Sophie Fouron
“It’s interesting, because we dissect it a lot, we intellectualize it, we have to catch up to do, but for my daughters, it’s just acquired, she adds. They grow up there, like the son of Fabien Cloutier. »
Hold lounge and life is a carnival should be programs on the schedule of people like Jean Boulet who, during the last election campaign when he was Minister of Immigration, said falsehoods about immigrants who would not integrate. “What I like is that we give voice to people we don’t see much,” underlines Sophie Fouron. They need to tell each other, to see each other and to be heard. We must take an interest in our neighbors who have other experiences, other origins. The goal is always to be better everyone together and not to be everyone in our bubbles. »
Because for Sophie Fouron, happiness is very much about others.
life is a carnivalFridays, at 9 p.m., on TV5
hold lounge 3from February 3, on TV5