Jean Chrétien was the champion of unlikely appointments to the Senate.
Around the same time, he appointed two very different artists to the Senate, Viola Léger, the actress who immortalized Antonine Maillet’s La Sagouine, and Jean Lapointe, an authentic fanciful who had created a reception house that bears his name. . The two had never been in politics, which was not the case for Jean-Louis Roux, the other actor whom Jean Chrétien had appointed senator in 1994. Roux was one of the headliners for the no during the 1995 referendum campaign.
Being a Liberal was in the Lapointe family. Jean’s father had been a Liberal MP for the riding of Matapédia-Matane in Ottawa from 1935 to 1945. It was therefore by tradition more than by conviction that Jean Lapointe voted no in the referendums of 1980 and 1995. At the beginning of this year , he confessed in an interview with Radio-Canada that “the independence of Quebec would come one day or another and that he wished it very much”. His time in the upper house had convinced him of the irreconcilable differences between the country’s two founding peoples.
The two loneliness
The reactions that followed his death prove him right. Even if he had been a senator, even if he had been with Jérôme Lemay the star of a show on Ed Sullivan Show as Jérolas, his disappearance did not have much echo in the English-speaking press. Snippets in a few newspapers and brief radio and television newscasts. Nothing more. We are far from the many interviews and programs broadcast by our televisions, not to mention the glowing pages published by the newspapers. Once once more, this is a perfect example of our two solitudes.
If it happened that we did too much following the death of a Quebec personality, Jean Lapointe well deserved this media overflow. He was above all a man of great benevolence, a man very attentive to others, which is not the usual lot of too many artists centered on themselves. I was able to see his benevolence during the opening gala of Télévision Quatre-Saisons.
A hug from Jean Lapointe
Jean Lapointe was one of the stars invited to the gala which took place at Place des Arts on Sunday evening, September 7, 1986. I had to open the show in a tuxedo, wearing an Aboriginal headdress to recall the head of an Indian chief who was for a long time the image preceding the opening of Radio-Canada broadcasts. The headdress had been made in Kahnawake in the colors of TQS, according to the purest Mohawk tradition.
Behind the scenes, it was a rush. While the cameramen adjusted their devices, the dancers rehearsed their movements and the artists put on make-up, alone in my dressing room, I repeated the speech I had written for the occasion. I was terrified to address a full house, appearing on stage in a huge cabbage that symbolized the birth of the network. A few minutes before leaving my dressing room, there was a knock on the door. It was Jean Lapointe.
– I come to give you a hug to reassure you.
This man, whom I barely knew, had guessed that I was scared to death. He hugged me for a good minute, then whispered in my ear: “You have nothing to fear, people will like you if they feel that you like them. This is my secret to overcoming stage fright!”
Jean Lapointe must never have had stage fright, because Quebecers adored him.
