By JUAN RODRIGUEZ, Freelance - If you're wondering why Carey Price has rebounded this season guarding the net for "nos glorieux," go no farther than the cover of a recent issue of Derniere Heure: "CAREY PRICE EN AMOUR." There they are, Carey and his delightful blonde, "la jolie" Angela Webber, both 23-year-olds wearing Habs jerseys. Inside, in a half-page story laid out next to four photos from their personal collection, we learn they met six years ago in Washington state and have just bought a house in Candiac - "with no less than five bedrooms and three bathrooms."
Indeed, hockey dominates this issue of Derniere Heure, one of about a half dozen magazines that cover the Quebecois "star-systeme" religiously, whereby hockey players are subject to the same breathless gossip and hype as homegrown "vedettes" of television (particularly teleromans, or prime-time soaps, as well as reality shows and ubiquitous graduates of Star Academie), movies, music and even politics.
You've probably seen these magazines (7 Jours, Le Lundi, La Semaine, Echos Vedettes, Allo Vedettes, et al) lined up in prominent positions in your local depanneur -their covers screaming some new "drame" -but if you're an Anglo-Quebecer, you've probably not peeked at their contents. (ns)
In addition to a five-page spread on the passing of beloved coach Pat Burns, Derniere Heure included a 16-page pullout section devoted to the new Lance et Compte film, featuring an "exclusive" interview with its author, La Presse sports writer Rejean Tremblay, himself somewhat of a vedette, pictured smiling like a lovestruck teenager between two actresses clutching his arms. "It was really hard to decide which key characters I was going to kill off," says Tremblay, referring to the film's plot, in which members of Le National de Quebec die in a bus accident. In another weekly, he said he "lost sleep over the decision." Hey, would he lie to us? (Tremblay's status as both showbiz auteur and sports columnist has always struck me as fraught with potential conflict of interest.)
The same week, the cover of Le Lundi featured singer-actor Roch Voisine, who plays Danny Ross in Lance, in full NHL gear and the headline: "Hockey saved me." Inside, there's an interview with Annie Villeneuve, who had just launched a Christmas album: "I cannot live this period without Guillaume," referring to Guillaume Latendresse, the former Canadiens player shipped off to Minnesota last season -forcing a long-distance relationship that got Annie teary-eyed last year on the popular talk show Tout le monde en parle.
And the cover of Allo Vedettes that week heralds "The last battle of Guy Lafleur," namely to get closer to his delinquent son, Mark. The stories get repeated, with a few variations, from one magazine to the next. A week after his appearance in Allo Vedettes, Lafleur made the cover of Derniere Heure, in a dressing room photo taken after his recent farewell game at the Bell Centre, posing thin-lipped between his two sons, the good and the bad. The delinquency problems have been rough on his wife, Lise, he admits. It's never been easy being the wife of Guy! Guy! Guy!
Some local events guarantee sellouts. 7 Jours -which, with its 916,000 readers, is a flagship for media monster Quebecor (one in four Quebecois women read it) -recently hit the motherlode with the birth of Celine Dion's twins. On the week that People magazine trumpeted an "exclusive" peek at Celine's newborns at home, the local publication had its own exclusive -20 pages worth! (In other words: Anything the Americans can do, we can do better!)
That very few anglophones living in Quebec have heard of these local stars -excepting Celine and Ginette Reno and maybe a handful of others -reflects the "two solitudes" that defines the pop culture gap between French and English groups. Anglos identify with far off American celebrities, covered in publications like People or Star Weekly. Indeed, there is no Canadian equivalent to Echos Vedettes et al. The teleromans, the backbone of Quebec's prime-time TV and a fairly accurate reflection of local language and mores, seem to have little appeal to English-speakers, despite the fact that most Anglos born after the inception of Bill 101 are fully bilingual. They may have the same plot lines as Coronation Street or American daytime soaps -betrayal and lust, ad nauseam -but they don't seem to resonate with Quebec Anglos like the imported stuff.
Truth to tell, life in Quebec is one big soap opera. It comes with the territory. And a confession: While researching this story, I got hooked on these magazines, making me feel connected to a world much smaller than "le grand monde" -of (ahem) ideas, concepts, philosophies -I normally like to explore. Yet, in a strange way, these mags got me closer to that world too, if you accept the fact that, when you get down to it, everything is local.
What these weeklies do is reinforce the idea that Quebec, home to a small pocket of francophones thriving in the northeastern corner of a hemisphere dominated by English-and Spanish-speakers, is a "petite famille." And so the stories -any remotely noteworthy event in the lives of Quebecois, no matter how banal -get blown up to near-biblical proportions. Many of the stories -mostly written in conversational interview style, as if star and reporter (who are sometimes photographed together) are sitting around a kitchen table -address the star with the familiar "tu" instead of the more formal "vous."
It's a tribal thing, and the health of this surviving tribe of Quebecois(e) depends on the health of its vedettes. (Which might be why one recent Quebecor weekly came wrapped in a plastic bag with a sample Alco-tube Plus, an alcohol-detector hyped as a "Superbe cadeau de Noel" -to take the guesswork out of whether to go home from "le party" in a cab or not. "Evitez un dossier criminel," while upholding the Quebecois' reputation as bon vivants.)
Thus a recent cover of Echos Vedettes is splayed with the headline "DERNIERES NOUVELLES DE LEUR SANTE: Operations, Chimiotherapie, Convalescence ... ."
Inside, the grim news is tempered with "bon courage." "Still Three More Treatments for Dominique Michel," who at 78 was diagnosed with colon cancer ( "La dame va bien. Son moral est bon."), but nonetheless hopes to have "enough strength to eventually get under the warm Florida sun." Others include chansonniers Claude Leveillee and Zachary Richard (strokes for both), and Claude Gauthier (triple bypass), DJ Champion (lymphoma), 84-year-old actor Paul Buissonneau (circulatory problems in his legs requiring special socks made in Berlin, weak heart requiring a pacemaker), Lance et compte star Marina Orsini (appendicitis) and comedian Andre Sauve (laryngitis).
Then there's Ginette Reno, the Discovery of the Year 1964 and now an icon, still the strongest (i. e. loudest) voice of all female Quebec singers (her bombast being the template for Celine).
But wait! On the cover of La Semaine, in an exclusive interview ( "all rights reserved"): "I MUST TAKE CARE OF MYSELF," heralding a yearlong sabbatical under doctor's orders. The scoop: A diabetic, Reno was in the studio with son Pascalin when she suffered irregular heartbeats.
"I didn't know what was happening to me. I even cried. ... It was no doubt associated with my diabetes. I was also afraid that one day my kidneys wouldn't work and would need dialysis. For me that situation would be unbearable." Admittedly "tres stresse," Reno practices meditation and admits she needs to lose 30 pounds. She likes to travel with her family "but that costs a lot of money," so she's decided to buy a condo in Florida. So where did she plan to spend Christmas? Last year, she reminds us, she took "toute la famille" -including scribes from La Semaine in tow -to Punta Cana. This year, she planned to board the Cavalier Maxim stationed at the Vieux-Port.
Then it's Allo Vedettes' turn to report on the health of our stars, including playwright and novelist Michel Tremblay, photographed at the launch of his latest book Le Passage oblige (dealing with the difficult passage from childhood to adolescence). "I AM COMPLETELY HEALED," referring to the throat cancer diagnosed three years ago (and preceded in 1998 by a brain tumour). Michel Tremblay, like novelist Dany Laferriere, is one of those intellectuals who traverses the territory between the intellectual and the populist, a road that started 42 years ago with the mounting of Les belles soeurs, which not only celebrated Quebecois womanhood but also their salty joual patois.
You don't need to be an actor, singer, auteur or hockey player to enter the pantheon of vedettes. Here are just a few:
-¦Motivator and lecturer Jean-Marc Chaput, who on the eve of turning 80, celebrates 60 years with his wife and collaborator Celine (whom he calls "maman"). Chaput is not at all ready for retirement, reports Le Lundi, hyping his recent four-night stand at Le Gesu. "A man of his time, he uses social networks like Facebook and Twitter." Celine adds: "We've known years when we were poor. ... But we've always been in love."
-¦Former ADQ founder Mario Dumont, now host of the public-affairs program bearing his name. Politics, Mario tells Allo Vedettes, is our "national sport," adding "My style is developing, but at the same time it's my personality."
-¦Sonia Benezra, interviewer par excellence (Benezra recoit, on MusiMax, parlayed into a column for Le Lundi) and spokesperson for the Jenny Craig weight loss program, and one of the few Anglos to find fame on "la scene local."
-¦Radio host and baseball reporter Rodger Brulotte (perhaps known to Anglos through his association with the Expos) marrying Pascale Vallee (who works in human resources at Bombardier) in a ceremony attended by Premier Jean Charest and his wife, Michele, former coaches Jacques Demers and Michel Bergeron, boxer Lucian Bute, the sexy Caroline Neron, barber for the stars Menick, and former La Presse publisher Roger D. Landry, among others. And, of course, a photographer from 7 Jours.
-¦Jean Coutu, Quebec's pharmacy mogul, who has just published his autobiography, Sans prescription, ni ordonnance. "I was always someone who liked people," he tells Derniere Heure in a four-page spread. "I might have succeeded in medicine, but I wouldn't have had the same kind of life. In any case, I wouldn't be responsible for 17,000 employees." He's addressed throughout the article as "monsieur."
When it comes to Quebec, to paraphrase Sly Stone, everybody is a star. Call it provincial navel-gazing if you will, but the "vedetterie" gives Quebec the identity it needs to differentiate itself from the rest of Canada.
An ad offering three subscriptions of "our own magazines" for the price of two, starts with: "We have our own expressions." To wit: "Decrocheur" (a school dropout), "Songe" (an overly intellectualized idea favoured, say, in films from France), "Gratteux" (scratch lottery tickets), "Quetaine" (in a word: cheapo), "Ambulatoire" (outpatient hospital service). And, of course, "Glorieux" (in case you didn't already know: a member of the Montreal Canadiens). Not to mention "Poutine" (no translation needed).
These magazines cleverly integrate Hollywood news with the local stuff, giving the homegrown culture extra cachet: the starsysteme chez-nous rubbing elbows with the big stuff. (A piquant variation on the adage that you're known by the company you keep.) Quebec sait faire. We're second to none.
Hey, Anglos, get with the program! A gooey poutine-like mash-up of Quebecois culture! Delicieux! Tune in!
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