Faced with multiple allegations of plagiarism against historian and animator Laurent Turcot, the publishing house Libre Expression has decided to suspend the launch of his book until further notice. It’s us!co-written with Janette Bertrand, which was due to appear this year.
“We put everything on hold while waiting to see what happens for the rest of the things surrounding Laurent Turcot,” explained Frédérique Grenouillat, director of communications and marketing for the Quebecor Media Book Group, owner of Libre Expression.
The duty noticed that the presentation sheet of the book had suddenly disappeared from the websites of the publishing house and the booksellers who were already announcing its release.
It’s us! was originally slated to hit shelves on March 22, three days before co-author Janette Bertrand celebrated her 98th birthday. Due to “circumstances related to production”, its publication had however already been postponed for the first time to next September.
However, faced with the proliferation of plagiarism allegations against Laurent Turcot in recent months, the publishing house recently preferred to interrupt the launch. “No date has been set. […] We will know more in a few weeks”, specifies Frédérique Grenouillat, who does not close the door to the work seeing the light of day. “I can assure you that there is zero plagiarism in this book, the question is really not there,” she added.
The duty was able to view information about the book before it completely disappeared from the web. Libre Expression presented It’s us! as “the science of Laurent [Turcot] and Janette’s experience [Bertrand] brought together in an intimate conversation on the main topics covered in the autobiographies” of more than 2,000 elderly people who have told their lives through the video capsules Write your life!, produced by Janette Bertrand during the pandemic. The two authors therefore had to start from these stories to “understand where we come from and realize how far we have come”.
“Madame Bertrand is very disappointed, but respects the publisher’s decision and prefers not to comment further,” said the author’s agent, Jacques Primeau. In an email sent to DutyLaurent Turcot also said he was “disappointed” with the postponement of the release of the book, adding, however, “to support this decision”.
Plagiarism allegations
Star historian Laurent Turcot is facing multiple allegations of plagiarism that have been brought to light by a series of articles from the Montreal Journal in the last few months.
The daily revealed in December that the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières (UQTR), where Laurent Turcot teaches, had launched an investigation into nearly 120 cases of alleged plagiarism in various works by the professor, including History will tell usreleased in April 2022 and inspired by videos from his YouTube channel of the same name.
Already, in the fall of 2021, after conducting a first investigation, the UQTR had criticized Laurent Turcot for having taken almost word for word 13 passages from other books, without citing their provenance, in his work. Sports and leisures. A story from the origins to the present daypublished in 2016. The university had not sanctioned the professor, not seeing it as a deliberate error.
Early March, The Journal of Montreal has this time lifted the veil on some twenty other examples, mostly taken from capsules of Laurent Turcot’s YouTube channel, in which he allegedly plagiarized the work of researchers and creators. Another case comes from his podcast history buffbroadcast on Radio-Canada’s OHdio app.
For his part, Laurent Turcot has spoken a few times on his social networks in the last month to defend his integrity, claiming to be the victim of relentlessness. He explained that references in his books were removed during the editing process for convenience and apologized for any “unintentional errors” that may have crept in.
As for the alleged plagiarism in his video capsules, he indicated that he was not the author of the videos mentioned by The Journal of Montreal. “The omissions by his collaborators took place during the writing process”, he wrote on his Facebook page, specifying that corrections were made in stride and that his team will “further checks” on the ‘coming.