The writer and geographer Jean Morisset died Thursday at the age of 84, while numerous testimonies from people who knew or worked with him have since paid tribute to him on social networks.
Son of a navigator, born in 1940 in Bellechasse-en-Canada, he surveyed the continent from north to south, from the Far North to Patagonia, via Guatemala, Peru, Brazil, Alaska, Haiti, The Amazon or the Pantanal, so many journeys which nourished his reflection on the identity and destiny of the Americas, as well as his writings.
At Mémoire d’encrier, he published two essays, Dogs devour each other… (2009) and Deliberate Haiti (2011), as well as the collection of poems Song for Haiti (2014).
“He died yesterday at the Jewish hospital following a very rare cancer,” declared Rodney Saint-Éloi, author and founder of Mémoire d’encrier.
It all started in Haiti at the end of the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1986 where I met him. Jean was a brother and a friend. We have this common destiny of resistance. Quebec exists thanks to people like him. Poet, geographer and engraver of memoirs, fundamental human, he spoke to me in one of his last emails about his childhood and this maritime country “completely ignored and made invisible in the making of Quebec in recent decades”. It was he who taught me about Quebec. It was he who gave me the opportunity to see and love Quebec.
Rodney Saint-Éloi, author and founder of Mémoire d’encrier
Jean Morisset also published the essay with Boréal On the Trail of Wandering Canadapublished in 2018.
With Chloé Sainte-Marie, he collaborated, among other things, on the book-disc Cursed silencereleased in fall 2022. He has also contributed to several documentaries and produced the film Kiyoukta (directed by Aïda Maigre-Touchet), which received a special mention at the 26e Meeting of Quebec cinema.
PHOTO MARTIN TREMBLAY, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Jean Morisset and Chloé Sainte-Marie, on the occasion of the release of the book-disc Cursed silencein 2022