In August 2001, Sébastien Ouellet began doing what he loves doing most in the world: teaching.
He remembers, it was Physics 534.
Sixteen years later, life – which can be nasty – threw him in the dryer for a big cycle of terror… Cancer.
It was in 2017. Sébastien Ouellet was 47 years old. Prostate cancer, aggressive. Metastases. Treatments just as aggressive and debilitating.
The teacher took sick leave: “It blew up my life,” he told me. A real nightmare. All you see at the end of the tunnel is your children…”
The sick leave lasted seven years.
Sébastien returned to work at the beginning of April.
The illness is still within him, knocked out by the medication.
On April 2, Sébastien Ouellet set foot again at the Mistral secondary school in Mont-Joli, her school.
Her school, yes, but time had passed: colleagues had retired, changed schools, jobs…
What reception would we give him?
Professor Ouellet had therefore put on a little invisible armor: “I had put my emotions in neutral, I had closed the break. I didn’t want to give myself false joy. But when I set foot in the school, it was like waking up from a nightmare. My former colleagues welcomed me with open arms, they were happy, warm, it warmed my heart so much…”
Gradual return, for the first week. No teaching, preparation and acclimatization.
This April 2, Sébastien went to a lab, in his element. Through the windows he saw the river. It’s stupid, Sébastien grew up with the river, he comes from Saint-Gabriel, in metropolitan Mont-Joli, he has always seen the river… But that morning, he saw it REMARK.
“From the labs, we have a really nice view of the river. I never really took the time to stop at this view: I looked at it for two minutes. The sky was blue, I took the time to savor this beauty, something I never did before… I felt exhilarated: it’s really cool that I’m doing this work…”
There is a little pause, a nanosecond during which I anticipate exactly what Sébastien Ouellet ends up saying to me because they all say that, more or less, those who have stared death in the eye: “You savor so much life afterward. Nothing is the same. There is life before, and life after. »
It was Sophie Gagnier who wrote to me asking me to talk about her son’s new science teacher, Thomas Carbonneau. She told me that the teacher in question (she only had the first name, Sébastien) had told me about his cancer and his seven-year absence. Then afterwards, he captivated young people with his approach, his anecdotes about science and life…
I found the teacher. Sébastien Ouellet was suspicious, he didn’t think there was much to talk about. “I gave a lesson like I always do,” I felt him on guard, I felt a little stupid with my questions, but we started chatting, and there it was…
It gives this chronicle about the sky which, sometimes, turns blue again.
Tell me about teaching, Sébastien…
A teacher’s job is to turn on lights. I say all the time: “Give me a chalk and a board, that’s all I need to do my job!”
Sébastien Ouellet
He also convinced his young people, in this final stretch of the school year, to take notes with a pencil, on paper: “I tell them that it will help them in CEGEP, at university: we remember the material better when written by hand. »
And the young people are on board, they are taking notes by hand.
(Speaking of handwritten notes, on April 2, the day of his return, a former student turned teacher, Amélie Simard, presented him with a stack of papers: her notes from the very first physics course that Sébastien had given, in 2001… He bawled like a child.)
We ended up switching to “you”, and I said to Sébastien: Tell me about your Secondary III Science and Technology course…
“We see physics, chemistry, it’s a lot focused on anatomy. There’s techno, too, yeah, it’s important, techno. It’s concrete. You will find another clientele of students who are less suited to sitting in a chair. You go to the workshop and the rest of them, they’re beasts! We do engineering, basically. It’s important to turn on lights in their heads, too! I always say: “You won’t make a fish fly!” Some are made to fly, others to swim. The framework should not be too strict. We arrive at the workshop, things are moving, I have to slow them down! »
He insists on telling me an anecdote about turning on lights in the students’ heads, to show that you never know what this light will illuminate…
By the end of 2017, he told me, chemo had killed his immune system. He had to spend a week in isolation at the Rimouski hospital, alone, in a room, weak and in pain.
The nurse who took care of him was called Marie-Josée Migneault…
One of his former students, in anatomy. “It’s as if life is giving me back the work I’ve done. »
After the interview, Sébastien contacted me so that I could mention here three people who helped him get through these seven years of misery: doctors Vincent Fradet and Marie-Claude Duchesne.
And his ex-blonde, Nancy L’Italien.
Tell me about your first lesson, Sébastien…
“As if I were putting on my old slippers!” Even my old jokes came back, it was a bit like riding a bike again, you never forget it. The time passed in 60 seconds, it seems. I had prepared too much material. And I told my story to the young people, they were hooked…”
Pause here for me to quote Sophie Gagnier, Thomas Carbonneau’s mother, about this course: “My son came back from school with stars in his eyes. »
At the end of the day, it’s not confusing, Sébastien Ouellet didn’t want to leave school.
After seven years of suffering, of thinking about dying, he felt useful.
And alive.
“I said to myself: “If I’m going to live, if Heaven gives me a few more years, I’m not going to look at the ceiling.” I decided to come back to teach and it was the best move I made. However, is there anything more banal than that? I’m going back to work! It’s like I’m waking up from a long nightmare. I have the best job in the world. I communicate my knowledge. I prepare young people for their future. »