The Last of the Hippies | The Press

The first time I walked into my in-laws’ house, I fell in love. For their son first, but also for the place, which was the great work of Maurice, my artist father-in-law. There were paintings, books, quirky throw pillows and antiques everywhere, whereas our house was mostly IKEA.

Every centimeter of this place bears the mark of Maurice, who patiently renovated for ages this old rooming house filled with rats and cockroaches near Saint-Louis Square, bought for $15,000 in the 1970s by his wife Jocelyne and him. , with a down payment of $3,000. In five years, she was paid, because Maurice hated banks and debts.

His greatest wish was to die at home, and he almost succeeded. Despite serious health problems that he did not treat, because he refused doctors, vaccines and Big Pharma, he ended up calling the ambulance, having reached the end of his rope. He died in less than 48 hours in the hospital at the end of July, where his sisters and his son did everything to ensure that his last wishes were respected: no relentlessness.

I was able to see him one last time, and stroke his long hair. Because until the age of 78, faithful to his youthful look, Maurice still had hair down to the middle of his back.

My stepfather would almost be a caricature of boomer if, like most people, he had abandoned his convictions. But he remained a hippie until the end.

Against the consumer society and follower of self-sufficiency, he never bought anything new, made his own wine, and for a long time grew his cannabis in a closet, when it was not allowed. A feminist, he was the man at home who took care of the baby, one of the few guys who once demonstrated among women with strollers, while his wife worked and supported the family.

We can see Mo and Djo, this unconventional couple, in the documentary I’m getting married, I’m not getting married by Mireille Dansereau released in 1973, which details the choices of some women of the time concerning marriage, motherhood and relationships with men. We show a young Maurice cradling his son, while my mother-in-law grants the interview. I am always moved when I see these excerpts. They tried something, without having a model.

An existence against the current

We found in the paperwork an NFB document with numerous comments from the public when I’m getting married, I’m not getting married was broadcast on Radio-Canada on January 9, 1974. The most virulent concern Maurice, who however does not say a word in the documentary. A spectator analyzes the couple of Mo and Djo in these terms: “It’s a girl without principles who lives with a weakling who is content to be a gigolo; in the reversal of roles, there is a danger of masculinizing the woman and feminizing the man, whereas the woman still needs virility. Almost 50 years later, I still get emails that still look like this.

Maurice was against the tide and he was proud of it. A separatist, he had been visited by the police during the October crisis. Against all odds, he was a member of the PQ until his last hour.

In recent years, he had turned vaguely conspiratorial, without ever having frequented a social network – a simple internet connection was enough. Most people didn’t want to discuss politics with him, since he was convinced that we were all “brainwashed”, but I was always ready to fight with Mo. He needed to talk about it. And I liked him very much. I respected him, despite irreconcilable differences between us, and for his part, I think he trusted me.

I ended up understanding his thinking, revealing in my opinion the paradoxes that run through our time. Maurice remained true to his principles. Since the Vietnam War, he hated the hegemony of the American empire on the planet, which made him pro-Trump. I couldn’t believe a hippie and a feminist like him could stand up for this guy, but it was actually out of sheer anti-establishment belief. With Trump in power, he believed, it could be a mess in the United States, but the rest of the planet could hope for peace.

Make your life an art

When it was too much in our conversations – for example on the pandemic or the war in Ukraine – I made him turn to art.

Because Maurice was, above all, an artist. A very talented collagist, who had studied at the Beaux-Arts and had a few exhibitions in his life. But being unsociable, contemptuous of ambition and wary of institutions, he did not force the note to become famous. I always had the impression that he deserved a small place in the history of art in Quebec, he who taught me so much about the counter-culture here.

I have several of his paintings in my house, which I carefully take with me every time I move, which always catch the eye of my guests. Because it was not a hobby for Maurice, it was his vocation. About 200 paintings over a quarter of a century.

We now have the task of dismantling this permanent exhibition which lasted nearly 50 years in its house-museum, since my boyfriend, only son, is his only heir. We keep finding weird stuff, it’s fascinating. Maurice had several passions in his life that have left their mark. Genealogy, the history of the First Nations and New France, psychoanalysis, existentialism…

It seems that the mystery of Maurice is symbolized by this accumulation of chests that contain keys that open other chests, we feel like in a treasure hunt. His paintings are like that. Collages with magazine paper, which give the impression of a dream made with pieces of popular culture and references to the great classics, with lots of hidden messages. The more time passes, the more his paintings take on meaning and at the end of his production, in the 2000s, his paintings had mainly themes of nature and ecology.

Mo said he was nostalgic for painting before the invention of photography. He had made the portrait of Nathalie Petrowski in Mona Lisa dressed in jeans, which had inspired the cover of the book Mom Last Call, because the painting had been exhibited at the Lux. A majestic Pierre Bourgault whose arms are those of The Creation of Adam of Michelangelo, which has been enthroned in my house for 20 years. Nothing is more impressive than his huge fresco, which adorns his living room, entitled The new World. Just about every evil in the Americas can be seen behind a pixelated Christopher Columbus.

I loved when he explained to me the genesis of his paintings, his technique, all the trompe-l’oeil and the subtle references. We could get rid of everything in this house, but there’s no question of throwing away a single one of his paintings, which tells you how much we respect his work. We want to put on an exhibition, because he made so many jokes about his posthumous fame. It is his son, of course, who will write the catalogue.

Our Usher house

We found in a padlocked box cannabis seeds in small pots dated, sometimes 30 years ago, as well as a square of fossilized hashish. Until illness prevented him, he took his daily walk to the top of Mount Royal, where he smoked a joint, bit an apple, and tamed the birds that ate from his hand.

It’s been 10 years since he quit smoking, he couldn’t even take advantage of legalization, and we had a good laugh. How I laugh at the antique toilet with a chain for the ceiling flush that worked until at least 2010. On the other hand, the period windows and doors discourage me, and remind me of vague memories of the paddocks of the 1970s. This house evokes Edgar Allan Poe’s Usher house, but in a psychedelic version. It no longer has the same meaning without its creator. And in this historic street of the Plateau Mont-Royal, we don’t have the means to renovate it.

Nevertheless, despite his eccentricity, all of Mo’s papers were neatly arranged and filed. Not a single bill was overdue on the day of his death. Everything was in its place, according to his organization of the world.

For the past few days, I have constantly had the impression of having forgotten something, it stresses me out, and I realize that these are my weekly calls to Mauritius. We gave each other news and we debated, we fixed an appointment for a Sunday supper. He only saw his sisters and us, since the death of his companion at the start of the pandemic. This great loner said he was perfectly happy in this solitude, but I think he had more trouble than he admitted to himself. For years, the courtyard of his house had been unusable, we could not organize any party, because he had abandoned nature. “An English garden,” he would say, when we all knew it was just to have the host of peace.

Last week, I looked at this jungle, a little annoyed, but also with the giggles.

I was distracted by a chickadee that almost landed in my hand. I had forgotten: Maurice had of course tamed the birds in the neighborhood and a very wild stray cat who doesn’t let anyone approach him. These are the only living beings he wanted to attract to him, this man who kicked us out when the evening stretched too long for his taste.

It’s so strange to be here without him.

The chickadee looked me straight in the eye and seemed to be waiting for something from me.

“I’m sorry, he’s gone. And the spirit of the place with him. »