[Point de vue de Josiane Cossette] Contribute to the beautification of the world

A writer and committed citizen, the author has taught literature at a university, is president of the board of directors of an elementary school and a member of the editorial board of Letters from Quebec. You co-directed and co-wrote the collective Shock treatments and tarts. Critical assessment of the management of COVID-19 in Quebec (After all).

The look is frank, like the boy. “I found this fun that you want to talk to me about these little texts,” says Vincent Vallières, whose Facebook page has been overflowing with textual jewels for a year and a half; as many hatreds for the territory as for the humans who inhabit it.

Appetizer. “The wind has momentum. It pushes the sky to make a carousel with the clouds. Immense shapes merge there and then disperse one after another just above the horizon line. I saw a heart, a tree, a house, three cars go by. In a few seconds the blue of hope gives way to the gray of doubt that smears everything. Skyscrapers don’t live here, they prefer the south and the big centres. Grande Prairie, Alberta, impressionist Polaroid version in La Vallières.

It was during a solo tour, in the summer of 2021, that he started writing more diligently than the cities he stopped in. “It was me and my sound engineer… traveling by motorbike! What does it do, kilometers of asphalt to devour alone, letting your head go in all directions; that indeed, landscapes in front of which to stop just because. “It’s the kind of tour that leads to a kind of interiority. I let the film flow through my head without resistance. Then, once at the hotel, he crystallizes it in text form and offers it to us. Gift.

Between everywhere and nowhere

“I got caught up in the game, now that my kids are grown up I get to a city a few hours earlier and leave a little later. » Without the bubble band, which protects as much as it keeps at a distance, the encounter with the city and its world is more complete. You have to give yourself space so that the moment to capture comes.

This is what the singer-songwriter chases, very peacefully, running: moments – beyond and below landscapes and humans. The workers who leave the factory under a clouded sky, in a disorganized ballet, the eyes of a young rebel shining, determined, the couple who come to introduce him to their now grown-up son, and whose first Date took place in one of his shows, still ti-ass.

We talk about putting ourselves up to the people we meet, never above them; humble encounters, with the territory and with man, on whom he never tries to impose his point of view. A healthy and mutual otherness. Rare. Even when anger growls. “I always thought that Desjardins’ melody spoke of life before, that the security of the citizens of Rouyn had been acquired for a long time. I have a sudden thought for my grandparents who went on strike in Asbestos in 1949. [Plus de] 70 years later, it is absurd that working people in Quebec are still faced with impossible choices. »

We get along. He understands that some locals don’t want to see him; he respects their desire not to change their vision, because that’s what keeps their world in place. Humble, they said. In the case of the Foundry, Horne addresses his “tough” attitude to our PM, “a good father. Surreal to hear him drag the problem into the citizens’ court ”.

All beauty is not lost

There is talk of Baroque urban centres, without an urban plan, then of those who, concerned about heritage, have done things better. “Perhaps this is too or tawdry at times, but there’s a vision, a concern to preserve something” – which doesn’t mean we freeze time. Say hello to entrepreneurs who don’t make a clean slate of the past, like Moulin 7, a microbrewery in Val-des-Sources that exhibits artifacts from the old Jeffrey Mine and has highlighted the old site by creating Slackfest, where two one-kilometre cables stretch above the pit. On August 12, she also purchased the Sherbrooke native The habit of ruinsby Marie-Hélène Voyer (Lux), a favorite essay that I encourage her to read soon.

From the North Shore to the Yukon, Vincent Vallières is enraptured by the vastness. “What is striking about Grande Prairie is the space. The width of the streets. Serge Bouchard said that in Témiscamingue some rivers did not yet have a name. Too many. We don’t always know each other’s reality. Some of these cities, where space is not a constraint, were built so that mining trucks could drive through them. They were built to be demolished one day. Like Gagnon, where my parents once lived, razed and then buried. Like Fermont, which is still standing.

“The communities that have formed keep the cities alive. Rouyn has become an incredible cultural centre. I point out to him that, if certain communities honor him too little, his texts do a damned duty of memory.

This is characteristic of the artists, who often act as intermediaries, and not only for their own creations, but also for those of others, inheritances, elements of nature, flashes that they collect and reunite, with sensitivity, in boxes of all kinds. During Myriam Gendron’s show at La Tulipe on Dec. 8, Glenn Jones said guitarist John Jackson displayed everything he found on the floor under glass: pre-war five cents like broken bottles, chicken bones like shells .

I thought autobiography of the mind, by Élise Turcotte (La Mèche), then, again, on texts by Vallières. And Myriam Gendron summed it all up, with humor and heart, by saying that she was now doing all that she did “to contribute to the beautification of the world.”

To all these gatherers and gatherers of effulgence, thank you.

Eventually, we’ll get there. Happy holiday.

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