When I heard that Valérie Plante, mayor of Montreal, was releasing a comic strip, I thought it was a joke.
Let’s see! As if the mayoress had the time, by managing the metropolis, to draw little men and make little comics.
And yet, it is true. The mayoress will be released in October Simone Simoneau, chronicle of a woman in politics, co-scripted with illustrator Delphie Côté-Lacroix.
I wonder who will be the model for Mme Plante’s comic strip.
Will she be Gaston Lagaffe any more, will we be entitled to Valérie Laricaneuse? Or is she more of the Lucky Luke style, the man who shoots faster than his shadow (will we be entitled to Valérie, the mayoress who pedals faster than her driver?).
Or, is she more trendy Calimero, will she proclaim “It’s really too unfair, everyone criticizes me because I am a woman”?
FLUENTLY BILINGUAL?
I almost suffocated when I read publisher Tristan Malavoy explaining the decision to simultaneously release an English version of the comic.
“Valérie Plante, who is the mayor of a city that is bilingual, was keen on the idea that English-speaking readers could also have access to the text as well.”
Uh, sorry? Since when has Montreal been a bilingual city? Mr. Malavoy and Mrs. Plante would do well to consult the Charter of the city of Montreal: “CHAPTER I CONSTITUTION OF THE MUNICIPALITY 1. The City of Montreal is constituted. Montreal is a French-speaking city. ”
On Facebook, the mayoress wrote that for years she had been jotting down notes in a notepad and drawing stick figures and that “this creative process has contributed to her sanity in recent years.”
I am glad. But, we Montrealers, what do we have as a “creative process” to save our mental health, we who live in a city that drives people crazy?
Try to find your way around the maze of works, closed streets, bicycle highways, you will see that it drives you crazy!
Next time I’m stuck in traffic for hours on end, I’ll have a little thought for the mayoress and pull out my notebook to draw stick figures.
Yesterday at QUB radio, I interviewed Montreal restaurateur Vianney Godbout.
When I told him about Mme Plante’s comics, he told me: “I didn’t have time to make a comic strip, I had to survive his attacks”. He then denounced the “administrative terrorism” of the Plante administration, the closed streets, roadworks, bicycle highways, street entertainers, red tape, and so on.
TURN AROUND
Last minute news. As of going to press, I learned that copies of the mayor’s comic book could not be delivered on time to Montreal bookstores.
Indeed, I learned from a reliable source that half of the delivery men (forced to transport boxes of books by bicycle to respect the mobility instructions of the City) got lost in the streets of the city. And the other half fell into a pothole screaming “Damn crazy city!”
It felt like a comic book.
- LISTEN to Sophie Durocher’s column of the day on QUB radio:
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