Jean Bédard took a long detour through philosophy to return to the earth. After having been a social worker, having signed numerous books, novels, essays, stories, he now brings his life closer to that of a vegetable or a flower.
“You don’t get to vegetable status so easily,” he says in the documentary. The act of beauty, directed by filmmaker Nicolas Paquet, on the Sageterre farm, which Jean Bédard and his wife Marie-Hélène Langlais set up in Bic, in Bas-Saint-Laurent. “The reaction of the plant placed in a crisis situation is always the same: hold on, learn, find the right attitude vis-à-vis the most unjust conditions, stubbornly persist, stubbornly remain the same. Coming into contact with plants, he continues, is also coming into contact with an age-old culture.
Sageterre is therefore the project to which the couple have devoted themselves in recent years: the start of construction of land at the service of the community. This is how the land welcomes people who wish to develop an agricultural project, for various periods, in the five apartments available for this purpose.
The land belongs to no one
However, since 2019, Sageterre has also become a FUSA, for Agroecological Social Utility Farm, a model that currently includes some seven farms in Quebec. “This means that from now on, the land does not belong to anyone”, says Nicolas Paquet. In fact, it is at the service of those who cultivate it.
“At some point in his life, Jean [Bédard] became aware of the fact that we can do all the possible actions, if we do it alone in our corner, we will not succeed, ”says the filmmaker.
The film’s narration is largely based on excerpts from the book Newspaper of a rural refugee, by Jean Bédard (Leméac), writes precisely in the lands of Bic. “It’s a book written to make us live a year on the farm, continues Nicolas Paquet. He can also tell us about trees, parasites or asparagus. All this with a gaze filled with love that shows us the beauty of each. This beauty, writes Jean Bédard, is the “germ of the future”.
Each project accepted by the Sageterre farm must meet certain criteria, in particular to serve the immediate community and the wider community of the region.
“It’s a collection of projects. A couple can take care of raising ducks, while other people can have a vegetable garden to make organic baskets. There are different shapes. Each of the projects must meet the criteria of this house,” continues Nicolas Paquet. Thus, some projects that are “too individualistic” or whose pecuniary gain aspect is too important, without really having “a positive impact on the community”, may not be retained.
“What attracted me was both the concrete example visually and the beautiful thought of Jean Bédard”, explains the filmmaker, who immersed himself in several of his books, essays and novels. “He has the ability to make us understand the world differently, through the relationship with nature. »
For Nicolas Paquet, Sageterre is rather a kind of “laboratory”. And this idea of “dropping the concept of private property” is an example of the experiments that are going on there. Sageterre thus shows that certain utopias “are not unattainable”. But it would take an unsuspected mobilization and will to be able to carry them out on a larger scale.