By awarding the title of pioneer cultural icon in Quebec, many evoke the bards of the scene, poets or rockers of the 20the century, who have become living legends in Vigneault and Charlebois. Also enthroned in the collective memory are the revolutions of the musician Walter Boudreau, the filmmaker Michel Brault, the painter Jean Paul Riopelle, as well as those of the writers Réjean Ducharme, Marie-Claire Blais, Michel Tremblay and the poets Gaston Miron and Jacques Brault. So many others form our star constellations. When one of them disappears, there is a chorus of mourners. And the media collect many testimonies celebrating the legacy of the artists who blew the bold wind of new times. Then, their memory fades, or not. The shadow of Félix Leclerc has not finished floating over Quebec as an identity buoy. Other faces fade.
On the centenary of each, celebrations resurrect the work of the scouts and magnify their memory. Suddenly, they come back to life through the audiovisual archives, bursting with smiles, memorable performances, cult novels with dedications signed on the screen before our eyes.
Culturally, Quebec is so young that many contemporaries have known or admired timeless icons. Enough to create a close relationship between the public and the creators anchored in history. Those who supported the careers of these artists also deserve their posthumous hat-off. Flamboyant artists don’t just make themselves. They need producers, publishers, broadcasters to attract crowds and maintain popular fervor.
During the Quiet Revolution, everything had to be built, including a cultural industry worthy of the name. It will have flourished on stage, on the small and big screen, on the shelves of record stores and booksellers, as well as in new temples of spectacle erected during the feverish decades. From feverish times, pioneers emerge, both under the lights and behind the scenes.
This week, the death of producer and impresario Guy Latraverse shook the cultural world and occupied the news. We heard his sister Louise speak of the “little king” that he was from childhood, praising his intelligence, his organizational gifts and his crazy love for artists.
This man with all his teeth and bones had dreamed big for Quebec of entertainment, festivals (he co-founded the Francofolies) and the small screen. So many achievements of the father of our show business are to be marked with a white stone. Behind the success of the first show by a Quebec artist — Claude Léveillée — at Place des Arts in 1964 was this puppeteer in his puppet theater. Four years later, he was still producing The Osstidcho on a triumphant tour, a highlight of the Quebec scene. I saw the wolf, the fox, the lion, an incandescent show in 1974 by Félix Leclerc, Gilles Vigneault and Robert Charlebois on the Plains of Abraham in Quebec, was orchestrated under his baton, as the following year, for the meeting of five greats of song and music. humor on Mount Royal. Nothing too beautiful! seemed to be his motto. It materialized in sounds and lights in the pharaonic spectacle Pink magic, by Diane Dufresne, at the Olympic Stadium in 1984. Cinema, theater and comedy galas today — alas! — in free fall, came out of his hat.
Negotiating the contracts of the artists for whom he was the agent with incredible aplomb; the most prominent, Léveillée, Deschamps, Dufresne, Charlebois, Forestier deployed under his wing. The others dreamed of doing the same.
We saw him everywhere achieving the impossible, then little by little retreating under the attacks of evil in his mind. His bipolar disorder, an illness that he helped to demystify by naming it and creating the Revivre charitable foundation (now Relief), fueled his legendary efficiency during his “manic” periods. This creative overactivity born from a psychological imbalance often lights the flame of great builders. But how they then sink into deep depressions! The drug Lithium will have saved Guy Latraverse, while sawing his ladder towards the highest peaks.
Those who are praised post mortem are sometimes, like him, beings familiar with peaks and abysses. Wounded visionaries, Icarus with wings melted as the sun approaches, suddenly fallen from the sky. I knew him when his career was faltering and his projects were fading. He was going to retire soon. Burned by the incandescence of his dreams. Respect for the titans who carried their society by daring excess! Long live their burning memory!