The author is a historian, sociologist, writer and retired teacher from UQAC. His research focuses on collective imaginations.
This text and the one that will follow aim to illustrate how much our world has changed over the past few decades. The share of naivety and innocence has greatly diminished. They also want to show how people could once again marvel at little cost.
At the age of thirteen, I was a student at the classical college in Jonquière. At the end of the school year, I started working in a construction materials factory (weekly salary: $13 for 55 hours of work). I had a coating applied to doors and windows to protect them before they were delivered. I worked there until classes started in September. I did the same thing the following summer (during the years that followed, I got promotions: driving a tractor, then a truck). But in the meantime, I had gained confidence. Quite young, I had developed a passion, I would even say a rage, for travel, for exoticism, without being able to satisfy it. I resolved to remedy this.
During the second summer, I got off work at noon on Saturdays. An hour later, I was posted at the exit of Jonquière and took my place in the “thumb” line. Destination: Montreal.
It was easy in those days to travel on the go. Confidence reigned. I repeated this experiment every week until the end of August. I always managed to reach Montreal before dark or in the middle of the night. When it was not too late, I went to sleep at an uncle’s house on rue Parthenais. He was always surprised, happy to welcome me. There were two bedrooms in the basement. One day, I saw that one of the two had been rented to a student older than me. We spoke very briefly, but my aunt warned me that he was “not like the others”: he read a lot, but spoke little… His pensive, slightly sullen look had intimidated me. I remember his name well: Pierre Vallières.
When I arrived too late, I went to lie down on a bench at La Fontaine Park. Police officers sometimes made rounds there. Seeing me, they feared for my safety and took me to their post. I was thus entitled to the “comfort” of a cell. I was delighted. I also happened to take refuge at the Central Station or knock on the door of presbyteries (where I was never refused hospitality). It must be said that I always wore my gray pants and my blazer with the crest of my college accompanied by a Latin formula that I forgot (it spoke of seeds and harvest). This served as a master key for me.
I was always up very early in the morning, especially when I was in prison. So I had all morning to explore the city, on foot or by bus. I was amazed by everything I discovered: the skyscrapers, the factory chimneys, the windows of the department stores, the car traffic, the wide crowded sidewalks, the foreigners, the unknown languages, sometimes the planes. The girls too, dressed more lightly than in Jonquière (the temperature difference perhaps?), but too old for me.
Around noon on Sunday, I went to stand at the bottom of the ramp that led to the Jacques-Cartier Bridge. Again, I always managed to return home during the same day, sometimes in the early morning it is true. It sometimes happened that I had to walk for two or three hours during the night because a traveler had stopped in Chicoutimi or a little further away. But I was always light-hearted, delighted with everything I saw and experienced, not being able to believe that it was so easy to go so far and come back for almost nothing — I never brought only $5 left in my shipments.
On Monday morning, I was still working at the factory. Impatient, the workers waited for the break to hear the story of my escapade: in which “tanks” I had traveled, how long it took us to cross the “park”, had I seen any accidents, where I had spent the night (in prison… “right?”). And Montreal, what was Montreal like? Sometimes my odysseys had been very calm, but I didn’t want to disappoint them, I embroidered a little. They returned to their workbench, dreaming.
The chance of “pushing” also provided me with happy surprises. Once, it was Félix Leclerc who gave a show at “Val-Menaud” (a small song club erected on the banks of the Saguenay, which has long since disappeared). Another time, it was Pierre Valcourt, the famous “Guillaume” of the Plouffe family, whom I was able to question for a few hours. Still things to tell! And I’m not talking about the times when I had the good fortune to be taken on board a truck!
Above all, the memory I keep today of these poor people’s journeys is the feeling of having in some way outwitted destiny, of having briefly escaped the rigors of an austere existence which forced one to pretty spartan kind of life. But you had to have a solid dream to get out of the rut like this.
However, something strange still intrigues me today. My parents, so quick to worry about anything and everything, never opposed my plans. And I never called them to reassure them. I never felt threatened. I was unconscious, all in the pleasure of my adventures, of the unknown, of the marvelous. I even think they took a little pride in my resourcefulness.
This is what later allowed me to extend the scope of my explorations.