The essayist and literary critic Duty Michel Lapierre died on Friday. He was 70 years old. Passionate about history, he was particularly fond of Jacques Ferron, about whom he wrote extensively. The author was also interested in the great builders of Quebec society, including Louis Joseph-Papineau, to whom he had deep admiration.
“Michel had a way of speaking about Quebec that was his own, in a lineage of social and popular history,” explains Jean-François Nadeau. Today journalist and columnist at Duty, he hired Michel Lapierre as a collaborator in 2003, when he was directing the cultural pages of the newspaper. “He was a very erudite character, who reflected on the history of Quebec by writing about the “small world”, about the working classes. »
Louis Cornellier, also a columnist at Duty and friend of the author, remembers his “firm independence convictions, which went back to the time of Papineau and the patriots”. “Michel was first and foremost an intellectual. He had convictions, but he practiced more activism through his pen, highlighting subjects that were dear to him. »
His last review for the Duty, which dates back to July 2023, dealt with a biography of Louis-Joseph Papineau. When he left the newspaper last summer, he began writing an ambitious book on the history of Quebec, a project he had cherished for a long time, but which he did not have time for. to finish before his death.
Illustrious writer
Michel Lapierre is the author of The Quebec Venus with or without fur (1998), an essay on female characters in Quebec novels from 1880 to the present day. In 2003, he published The other history of Quebecan essay on the political and cultural evolution of Quebec, based on historical texts on the era of the patriots and on the relations of Quebecers with the Indigenous people.
“Michel Lapierre makes us discover that the coming of the Quiet Revolution was not a coincidence, but a necessity inscribed in the very daily life of our people, in its underground and, so to speak, secret evolution,” writes his publisher about the book. It is notably about Louis-Joseph Papineau, whom the essayist considered “the Quebec politician par excellence”.
“He had obsessions. Certain subjects kept recurring in his texts, such as Papineau and Ferron. Michel devoted a sort of constant worship to Ferron,” explains Jean-François Nadeau.
Mr. Lapierre also distinguished himself as a contributor to the magazine The Apostrophe (2001-2009), monthly L’Aut’Journal (1999-2004), at the cultural weekly Here (2000-2007) and daily The Press (2001-2003), before joining the editorial team of Duty.
Holder of an undergraduate degree in political science from the University of Montreal (1979) and a master’s degree in French studies in 1983 at the same university, he obtained his doctorate in literary history ten years later, still at the University of Montreal.
Historian at heart
Last June, the Montreal Historical Society awarded him a medal for his promotion of the history of Quebec and his contribution to it, a subject which fascinated him more than anything.
“It was impossible to talk to Michel about a historical figure without him undertaking to do his genealogy,” recalls Louis Cornellier. He therefore looked a lot to the past, but never lost hope when tackling contemporary issues that were close to his heart, such as independence and the French language. »
Both Louis Cornellier and Jean-François Nadeau remember a “very kind and gentle” man. The latter states that he was “very assertive in his criticisms, but discreet on a daily basis”.
Strongly attached to Duty and its story, Michel Lapierre fought to write there as long as possible, until his health no longer allowed him to do so.