Cancer took away the storyteller of Sept-Îles Simon Gauthier in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday. He was 48 years old.
In 25 years of career, this man of words and of scene, youth author in his spare time, made his stories travel on several continents, sharing on several occasions his stories with the Francophonie of Europe and Africa.
A singular character, described as “larger than life” by many and as “our cartoonist of speech” by Michel Faubert, Simon Gauthier was known for the musicality of his art.
Guitarist and
Marc Saint-Pierre, who developed these original instruments with Simon Gauthier, today mourns a dear friend. “There is a new star shining north of Sept-Îles,” he confides.
He remembers a friend who liked to “spread the imagination” around him with mischievous winks. Once, recalls Marc St-Pierre, for no reason other than to make life easier for ordinary people, the storyteller had hung buckets of maple sap “12 feet high on the Hydro masts”, with a ladder and the “post syrup” sign. “It was his way,” recalls his longtime accomplice, “to make the world around him brighter.”
“Magic wherever he went”
At the Tadoussac Marine Mammal Interpretation Centre, Simon Gauthier has for years told children the story of “belugas and little girls”, wrapping the rigor of the natural sciences in a package of humor and imagination.
The announcement of his death, which occurred after a long illness, raised a wave of tributes in the artistic community.
“Simon is a mixture of troubadour and mystic endowed with an immense humanism”, underlines Mathieu Lippé, a fellow storyteller who had known the disappeared for twenty years. “He brought magic everywhere he went. »
Daniel Gaudet met Simon Gauthier in 1992. Their friendship, born in the setting of Sept-Îles, generated an artistic complicity that lasted 30 years. “I can still see him practicing his first cow stories, directly in the field in front of our house,” wrote Mr. Gaudet in a note sent to the Duty.
The storyteller and he have collaborated on a dozen shows. “He was never afraid to explore, projected himself into this overflowing imagination where all the possibilities were found”, continues his friend. “He was a larger-than-life character who succeeded in transporting us into his magical universe, who devoted his life to his art, to sharing his vision of the world, his love of words and territory, with as much discipline as madness. To make the world more beautiful. »
“I will miss my friend Simon du Fleuve,” concludes Daniel Gaudet.
Mr. Gauthier spent the last years of his life in Saint-Elie-de-Caxton. In the summer of 2019, he played a “free dreamer” on the stages of Quebec as part of his show The Celestial Wanderer. His character aspired to become a “misery hunter” – a mission that Simon Gauthier will be able to accomplish himself in death, smile his relatives.
“Someone so alive who goes to the other side,” says Mathieu Lippé. “It is sure that he is going to resuscitate the afterlife! »