Juste entre toi et moi - Gilles Vigneault

Episode Date: June 21, 2025

Dans la grange qui lui sert d’atelier, Gilles Vigneault accorde une de ses rares entrevues. À l’occasion de la diffusion d’un documentaire qui lui est consacré, le poète réfléchit à voix haute sur son rapport à l’autre, sur l’amour et sur l’évolution du peuple québécois. « Je ne m'estime pas encore du tout comme un vieux sage », jure-t-il à 96 ans.

Hi, it's Dominique Tardif. Welcome. Just between you and me, welcome to an episode that makes me want to be an artist I never thought I'd have the chance to pronounce the name of this microphone. Because my guest today is Gilles Vigneault. A few weeks ago, I went to Mr. Vigneault's house in Saint-Place, it was about an hour from Montréal. Mr. Vigneault welcomed us in a farm that serves as an atelier. It is a farm located on the same vast land, on the same very beautiful land as his house. Mr. Vigneault is now 96 years old. If we exclude his audition concerns,

he is in great shape, in an astonishing shape, and he is the subject of a documentary, a beautiful documentary, I dare say, entitled Gilles Vigneault, at the heart of the country. It will be broadcast on June 22 at 21h30 on Télé-Québec. In this documentary, Mr. Vigneault goes to Natashkwan, his native village, and he goes there with none other than Bougaardiyouf. They discuss together a lot of fascinating subjects, and we also hear the songs of Mr Vigneault played by different artists, including Louis-Jean Cormier, Lou Adrian Cassidy, Michel Rivard, Ariane Moffat. We also celebrate these days the 50th anniversary of the song

Jean du Pays. It was written by Mr. Vigneault in 1975. I draw your attention to a file that will be published in the next few days in the press, in which my colleague Mario Girard tells the five events of the National Party that took place on the Montagne in Montreal in 1975 and which deeply marked the history of Quebec.

You can also read the article I pulled from my meeting with Mr. Vigneault in the press, on lapresse.ca or through the press mobile app. And I'll take you, without further ado, with me in the workshop of the one you will first hear us describe the places. Here is my interview with the monumental Gilles Vigneault. between you and me for once it stays between you and me In a part that burned, that has been going on for centuries, and burned, and had to go through the centuries. And I inherited about a third of the size.

And then in 1970 and... 10, 11, around that time, I isolated that, inside and outside. And with wood, of course. And after that, I put books in it. Books are wood. And when the guys from the recording studio to make the first record, one of the first records,

came here, the technicians said, « It's perfect! » It's the ideal insulating of books. And I didn't inherit books. I had a lot of books. And I bought others. Sometimes I received others. Other people.

And in a life that was not made, spent 75, 80, 90 years, we have been drifting. And today, 96 and a half years, it's like a library. It's like a library. Respectable. Tell me, before I ask you more serious questions... Oh, it's serious! I used the wrong word. I'm sorry. I already feel bad.

I wanted to ask you, where were you before you arrived here? Before I arrived here, I was in Quebec. And before I arrived in Quebec, I was in Antashkwal. But what I wanted to ask is where were you before you arrived here in Lagrange? You arrived by car a few moments ago, in your van. No, I arrived in a van. The small car for an individual, for a person. But... You play pool, is that it?

Yes, yes. I had the time before you arrived to win three games against one player and my son arrived and we lost the game. I was happy, it was time to come here. What does a day in your life generally look like? A typical day in Gilles Vigneault's life? Oh, it's quite difficult to describe it to you. Between interviews...

We have to start with the beginning, the head-butt, the billard, the hens, feeding the dogs later, then writing a little bit from time to time, especially to keep the newspaper. I have been keeping the newspaper here in Saint-Blois-Cythe since 1972, since the day Léo Ferré came here.

Léo Ferré came here. Léo Ferré came here? Yes, he came here, he came to the house. And Béard too, he made several. But among other things, Léo Ferré, when he saw the house, he said, Oh, you found your hole. That's where you're going to stay. That's where you're going to stay. That's where you're going to age. And it was true.

And... I've been to many places in my life, including the tours. So... You saw the country? We saw a little country, yes. Between France, Switzerland, Belgium, So... You saw the country. We saw a little bit of country, yes. Between France, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, Mexico, the United States and Canada as a whole.

The Bibi. Except that... Yes, yes. Except that I didn't sing in Tarnow. It's the only province where I didn't sing. I sang in all areas, up to Bayardville in British Columbia. But I loved singing. I'm not saying much. I would have loved to sing so much. But I loved singing as I sing.

Everywhere. Everywhere. Because as we said with Yvon, we were both in agreement. It's a drug. As we said with Yvon Deschamps, we agreed on both. It's a drug. Singing and being on stage, it's a drug. It's a hard drug that we're addicted to. But we don't know.

The public rarely knows. And we don't tell the public. But it's the truth. It's a drug. And it's because we like it a lot. You'll see, here you are five. My wife always says, as soon as you're two more than him, he's going to leave.

That's what I see. It's like... It's not like,. It's a public. As soon as I have a public, sometimes, almost always, I talk too much. It's not a complaint that I'm going to address you today, I promise. You don't talk too much today and I'm happy to provide provide you with an audience so you can give a little intimate show. I'm at the first stage. I'm happy to meet you. Me too.

One day, among the countries I visited, one day I was in Lebanon because of my slump, because there was a man named Jean-Paul Janotte who was president of an affair to give a prize to journalists who considered to have been well treated by the artists. And I won the prize, to my great surprise. I never mistreated the journalists. I always said that I liked them because it made the conversation. But I like the conversation. But it makes us think about what journalists do. Most of it. Most of it.

About what we do. And if the journalist is not good, and not very inventive, it makes us think too. Sometimes it makes the journalist think too. It's always good that I won a prize to be invited to Lebanon. Well, I was with my wife, Alijan. We went to Lebanon, and we found that extraordinary. We found that extremely instructive. It was the moment when we visited Israel a little bit, and Lebanon a little bit around.

Lebanon is a little bit around. And today, it's sad to hear what we hear about the countries surrounding the nations, authentic nations, surrounding an authentic nation that surrounds Israel. Because it is a genocide that I do not know who seems to be allowing. In any case, there is one who is responsible in particular. His people are telling him that he is exaggerating. en train de lui dire qu'il exagère. C'est très grave et on n'a pas le choix de suivre ou de ne pas suivre ces nouvelles-là. Et puis les nouvelles, elles sont toujours mauvaises. Avec notre voisin américain, ça s'améliore pas non plus. Our American neighbor, it doesn't get better either. I've listened to a lot of them recently.

It's better to laugh than to cry, it hurts less. I've listened to a song called The President's Walk, which you seemed to have written about Donald Trump, but it's not the case because you wrote it at the end of the 60s. Well, it's a song that was inspired by a children's song. Any song can inspire another. So, Le Fils du Roi, sans vache à sang, everyone knew that. And I did an extrapolation, an interpretation of that.

And we were with Robert and Louise in the living room at my place in Quebec, when I was in Quebec. And there was also Gaston, Gaston Rochon at that time, who was already my companion. Your friend, a pianist. My friend, a pianist and an orchestrator. It's important to say. And Gaston was there to copy what we were doing with the song, and we were there, three of us, copying, writing as we went along. I confessed what I was doing with the song. Infantine,

that we know, Son of the King, without a hunting horn. I thought it was a song that didn't say enough things, serious, but it was a children's song. So I decided to make an adult song. And at the end of the evening, the song was over because Robert was singing.

And Louise was doing the air partitions with that. We saw birds fly by. Gaston was taking notes and saying, is it good or not, let's start again. And we made the song like that, in one evening. And after that, I didn't think the song would be sung. But Robert and Louis said, yes, we're going to sing it with the others.

Yes, yes, that's right, you'll sing it. It's not useful that I'm here. They said, you're going to sing it with us. Well, it doesn't work. And that's it. That song came like that. It was easy because there was already a track, there was already a skeleton to propose.

And at that time, the lyrics were easy to find. I watched the documentary that you dedicated, Gilles Vigneault, in the heart of the country. And you are in the company of Bucardieuf. And after a few minutes with Bucardieuf, you find several points in common. You who were born in Natchezquan... Yes, he doesn't only have the liege. He who comes from Senegal.

And it often happens when two human beings who appear to be different have a real conversation, there are common points, common knowledge. I love how you started by saying, we are sensitive to appearances, all humans. And it's interesting to see how, on appearance, we judge sometimes. And it's a monumental malady because the words very often betray the appearance.

And the words sometimes embellish the appearance, completely change the perception that we have of the person by appearance. Color, is it enough of an appearance? And I was used to seeing people in color. Les innus sont de gens en couleur qui ont d'autres couleurs, d'autres langages, d'autres pensées, une autre existence et une autre histoire que nous, les Acadiens chassés de l'Acadie jadis, nous qui étions des réfugiés et qui nous cherchions une terre où nous pouvions être sédentaires. Ça ne pouvait pas mieux tomber d'arriver chez les Inus qui n'étaient pas des gens batailleurs and who were nomadic people, and who used their nomadism to express and exploit their nomadism of the greatness of the taiga and the tundra to hunt.

And I, when I see someone like Bukhar Diouf, and I learn that he comes from Senegal, and that he went through Rimouski to get here, we immediately have a connection. Because I was 8 years in Rimouski. That's when I learned, to my surprise, to my convenience and to my pleasure, to get to know the French authors, to learn how to make rhymes, to make friends with whom we had formed a club of poets. And in Rimouski, I learned all sorts of things because I took the classical course.

And through the classical course, I was baptized when I arrived as a poet because I wrote verses. And I liked that, and I liked that better than mathematics. It appeared in my exams later. But I still managed to make my baccalaureate. And we had the baccalaureate of fire. A burnt baccalaureate. Because in 1950, there was a huge fire in Rimouski. And the school was on fire too. We were a little dispersed.

Then we went to friends who were outside, who welcomed us at their place. I went back to Nantashkwan because some friends welcomed me. We had a burnt Baccalaureate that was calculated over the seven years we spent in college and the grades we had. It was a strange experience, all this, but I had learned what Rimouski was,

I had had the opportunity, and I took Rimouski, the best of myself, because I learned to make songs and that I had started to try to do it by doing country music. Because all... Well, yes. I didn't know you had a past country music, Mr. Vigneault. No, no, no. When I was counting that, he had burst out laughing. He didn't believe it. but it's the truth.

When I learned that I had started by doing handstands, then trying to copy French songs, like Berce par la Houle, etc. then sing, sing my guitar, even though I never played it. And I learned to make country music by a radio station in Tarnovo. And we were playing in Gaspésie. That's all we knew about Natashkwan. The men came from there and went to Nantashkwan. So we listened to country music.

My first songs were about trying to make country music. I found that... I was divided between trying to make country music and trying to rewrite, burst out laughing, oh, he's dreaming! But the original version was sung by Sacha Guittery, I was It's the first gramophone, which is... A graphophone, yes. ... which arrived... It was called that, wasn't it?

I believe you. Grafophone, it means to write, and phoné means to write the sound. It's the Greek you know a little bit, anyway. Not so much, but okay. So, the graphophone of my uncle, my uncle had bought the records of the Bolduc. Ah! But I copied the Bolduc at first, and later I admired it a lot,

and I respected it a lot. And I learned a few songs from him. Like a good day, the neighbor's boy saw the python in his garden. She sent him a little beast with her hand. Oh, the python! The juban, joop! The juban, joop! Etc. And it's the song that Riopelle always asked me, Jean-Paul, to sing me the Bolzuc.

He didn't ask me to sing my songs, he asked me to... It was to make me angry too. You didn't know that Riopelle was an admirer of the Bolduc. Riopelle? Oh yes, a great admirer. A great admirer. And me too. And I know a few others. Admirer of the Bolduc. Trenet, he's not a little admirer. When I sang in France for the first time,

it was at the radio station. It was in 1965. I learned with stupidity and happiness that Tronet was in the room. He was in the front row, the first row, and he listened to me. And when I sang the dance at Saint-Island, he applauded the first one. And then he made a funny request. I don't often tell this because it's a curiosity. But I'm curious. After, Tronin asked me to listen to Gilles.

He called me Gilles as one of his brothers. And I was proud. Tronin, I knew him very well. I knew 20 of his songs by heart, and my father too. And we loved what he wrote. My mother too. And he said, we never ask for an artist, but I will ask you. May I? Go ahead.

What is it? I said, what the hell? What does he want? So Trinay said, I would like to go to your lodge later and that you will feel me. Everyone is unhappy. And the dance at Saint-Dylan. I said, with pleasure, sir. With pleasure.

I admire you for so many years. And he came to my lodge. And I never did that for anyone else. And I never had the opportunity to do it for anyone else. I danced and sang, accompanied by the feet, the Saint-Denis dance for Tronin. And after that, we saw each other a few times, but like that, by chance, by chance of the conversation and the meetings.

I admired Tronin a lot, of course, because he was not only a songwriter, but he was a poet, a true poet, a singer. So it's an extraordinary memory. It happened to me in 1965. After that, I tried to make songs as much as I could, as any other person, Calpéa or Brassange. All of that provoked me to write songs.

You were talking earlier about the relationship of the people of Natchez-Couannes with the Inou people. Is that where your opening to the one that could be considered as the other comes from? Is that what it's about? Because several of your songs testify to this opening. Yes, it was a beautiful gateway to this reflection. The other, who is he? And I, it tells you that I didn't have any difficulty getting in touch with a biologist, a scientist and an erudite, I would say, like Bucquard. We became friends, colleagues, right away. Well, I'm getting a little bit of a sell-off.

I'm not a biologist, but I admired one of my friends at the time, Fernand Seguin, who was also a biologist. And when I meet a biologist, I tell myself, he knows more than I do about my beginnings. I have to be careful what I say. They know a lot about biologists, yes. They know our most intimate secrets. But yes, absolutely.

So, that's how it was to meet the other and meet the other when he looks like a Bukhar di ouv, I assure you that it's not difficult. Because it's because he also met the other. And we feel right away that a guy like that, that knows how to meet the other, and he considers the other as well as his fellow. Why is it so hard to see this in the collective sense? I mean, face to face, we realize what we have in common. It creates a warmth in us.

Yes, because we are made to have in appearance. The color, etc. The language, the appearances. But if we look for appearances and think a little bit, if we manage to break the secret of the language in question, at Bucardio, he speaks three or four of them, he even speaks a language that I only know one word for, it's the name of the language, the Wolof. I will tell you that the Wolof is not common in Natchezquad. There weren't many people who knew Wol Off in Nantashquan.

Neither in Montreal. There were some people, but they're rare. So, that gives a lesson. Someone who knows a language that you know absolutely nothing about, immediately, it tells you, me, when I grow up, and when I'm going to be smart,

I'm going'll learn Chinese. What a culture! You say, when I grow up, in my eyes, I'm 39 years old, and I think that's the case for many Quebecers, you've always been a figure of wisdom. Do you consider yourself wise? Do you get to the wisdom that we all aspire to? My God, no. No, no. It seems that it comes with age, and I make efforts to achieve it.

I am 97 years old in the fall, and I do not consider myself at all as an old sage.'t consider myself as a wise old man. I consider myself as an old man. But as a wise old man, it's very exaggerated. If I was wise, it would have started before. And I wouldn't have made the mistakes I made in my life. Well, I made some mistakes, I made some mistakes. In my opinion, I made some wonders, good things, but I didn't make any mistakes, fortunately.

But I saw lots of mistakes made around me too, and before me, and I can see them made from my time. But I think that if we put the list of the beautiful things you have accomplished, and we put it next to the list of mistakes, the list of beautiful things is longer. No. It's a list, you'll notice, that we always make shorter than the other. And the one we are more interested in is the right list we made. So, my songs are more interesting

anyway, even for the others, than my mistakes. Of course. But we are always curious about the mistakes of others. If only it was to stop us from doing so. Which mistakes did you make? Oh, one of the serious mistakes I made was that I didn't succeed,

I didn't succeed even after I had enough money to pay for my classes, to learn the guitar, the piano, and to summarize, the music. It's a big mistake in my life not to have learned music. It's true that it's funny for a composer. Usually, after a same thing, we say something else, with a point of interrogation, but you noticed, I didn't say it. But I wanted to ask you, where do you get the songs from, since you don't play musical instruments, you play harmonica, you play a little bit of harmonium. A little bit of harmonica. And a little bit of flute. But the melodies... In any instrument, I manage to get myself into writing a song. Not to write it, but to compose a song. So I wrote my country with a Chinese harmonica

that would serve, and it would play on both sides. On one side it would play in C, and on the other side it would play in D. It would go... I would turn it around, and it would go... And then it goes... And once, I was not taken aback by the instrument at all.

I was in the Caribbean Sea and I found myself on the bamboo pit. I cut a piece of bamboo, I found an iron to make holes, I made holes in it, I blocked some of them, I cut them and I made a flute. I didn't have an instrument. So my flute played five different notes. As Sylvain Le Liev said, it's an instrument, it has five notes. It's enough. It's a range.

And I wrote, Winter, far in the plain, walks its air currents. La la la la, la la la la, la la la la, la la la la, Winter far in the plain, walk these air currents. I was jealous of certain songs that Sylvain had written, and I'm jealous of all his songs. He was an admirable author, and he wrote 500 songs, because he was prolific and extremely talented when he left. But Sylvain and the lion told me that writing a song with Saint-Nath was good. It encouraged me a lot. And after that, we played together to write with monosyllables.

So I won't talk about it more than that, because we'd be half an hour on that. But that means that there's music that's more in the head and in the heart of the oneHylons is in the feet. And the music in many other things is in the hands that applaud. Because I wrote a song called Between Your Hands. which is entitled Entre vos mains, and which ends with saying, Entre vos mains, ma vie se passe, et ma vie achèvera entre vos mains. So, it comes from everywhere. The song comes from everywhere, in the body and in the head, of course, of course. But the head is the interpreter. Could we say that your instrument is the French language?

It's an instrument. Do you still have secrets for the French language? Oh my God, dictionaries, sir, dictionaries, lexics and grammar books. Latin, Greek and French. She still has a lot of secrets. Big, big books. A lot of secrets for me, the French language.

And I notice in my life that it's a secret. These are secrets that she keeps for many others. I'm not alone. I'm not alone. I listen to what is written, like a song, and I guess that it's a secret for everyone. But for me too, a big secret, the French language. But nothing weighs as much as a secret. What kind of pleasure does the language give you when you work on it? It takes me the same kind of pleasure as when I plant a tree or a beetroot.

One or the other. Or a sedate. When I plant a the other. Or a celery. When I plant a tree, there is a pleasure. We are giving life to something. We give an intellectual life to a song.

Because a song, we always think we made it alone. But no. Because a song, we always think we made it all by ourselves. But no. We made it with the crowd that heard it, that corrected it, that applauded it, that asked for it. And suddenly we discover that the crowd did as much work as we did. on découvre que la foule en a fait autant que nous du travail. Et que ce travail était extrêmement précieux parce que les chansons très souvent changent en cours de route

pendant qu'on les chante. Des fois, on change un mot en train de le chanter. On trouve un mot meilleur pour finir. We change a word while singing it. We find a better word to end. We find a different music, a different note to end on the word freedom. We find... It's the crowd that makes us think, talk about freedom. Because the crowd thinks about it. But the crowd says what they're talking about.

And suddenly you say to the crowd, I'm talking about freedom, you bastard! You don't understand? You have to vote! But you said it with more elegance than at the moment. But I never said it like that. It's not necessary. The crowd does the rest. It's the crowd that we think is the help of the performers.

The crowd is an immense performer who continues the song in his own way and who sometimes takes it by heart and deforms it. And it is extremely interesting to see the crowd deform the song and without doing the make it his own. I find that fascinating. One of my favorite songs from your repertoire is When you die of our loves.

And while listening to it, I was thinking of the public character you've been presenting to the Quebecois since the 1960s. The character of a man who is always optimistic, bright, while this song contains a very big melancholy. Me too, but it's a melancholic song thinking of all the people who have loved the Earth before us. And they taught us from the Latin, from the Greeks, they taught us what love was.

And that it wasn't only eroticism, but that it was a lot. We learn it from... I'm taking notes. We learn it from our own experiences, and sometimes from the experiences of others. So, love is very important, very serious. After we go out,

to talk about love, after Verlaine, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, after all that world, after Racine, after so many people, after Ovid, here. The art of loving, Ovid, yes. Yes. We have to go back to Ovid. That's it. That's it.

That's it. That's it. That's it. Everyone talked about love. Because everyone lived it. Good or bad. Maybe more often bad than good. We are not very right. We are not very smart. Us, humans. I don't say us, humans, I say us, humans,

we are not very right in there. Because it's complicated. Because it's cultural, because it has a language. It's cultural because it has a language. You'll tell me. But because it has 20, 30 languages. And we don't understand them all. They are as complicated as French. We don't practice them all and we don't learn them all.

So it's a major subject. It's not a book, it's a dictionary. Encyclopedic. Love. And if we have the slightest human sense of melancholy, we think of melancholy as the end of love. When you die of love, A la mélancolie que sera la fin des amours, quand vous mourrez de nos amours. On aurait pu dire, quand je mourrai de nos amours, j'eus été déjà plus poli.

Et de meilleur savoir vivre. J'aime que vous commentiez vos chansons, que vous fassiez la critique de vos chansons plus de 60 ans après les avoir écrites. I like that you comment on your songs, that you criticize your songs more than 60 years after writing them. I think that a song always lends itself to criticism. The first criticism is that of the author's. He looks at what he has done and says, yes, I could have finished my boat more politely. A song is in itself a journey. It's a boat on which you board a lot of people for a trip that people don't know they're going to do. When you make a song, I think you don't really know what you're doing. But you try it because it's exciting and you have the feeling of creating something.

And for men in particular, and for humans, the feeling of creating something, you will ask women who will tell you that, yes, it's a heavy, heavy, serious, serious feeling. It is an immense feeling. And it is full of lessons, full of joy, full of pain too. Full of happiness, the feeling of creating. So a song is a very small feeling, the feeling of creating. I like your silence. You have to respect silence.

Yes, because in silence, the creation of the song is a great feeling. I love your silence. You have to respect silence. Yes, because in silence, the word that will come is created. Yes, I'm thinking about that in my next question. In fact, I wanted to talk to you about another of my favorite songs from your repertoire. It's called Falling into the Night, in which you say, It is not true that our loves... So even if it's sometimes a complicated and unlucky adventure that love is in this ground that pushes the truth.

I was able to repeat that in a song that I improvised in front of Louise and Yvon, who, the time we took to say I love you, is the only one that stays at the end of our days. That is to say that to sing a birthday song, I won't tell you the whole story. We're talking about people from the country. But still, people from the country,

for a birthday song, I referred, because I was wrong, I suggested it, they suggested it, and they told me, well, do it. I said, well, I'm not going to do it alone, but they said, no, hey, hey, you have an idea, we agree, go ahead, do it, work. Louise said, well, they told me, and they went, you're the poet, send it. Well, yes. What do you want to answer that?

What kind of friends do you have, Mr. Boudou? Well, yes. With friends of the same, we can go from friend to friend. They made you a popper, right? So they trusted me. But people from other professions, who were familiar with the profession, trusted me. Yes, I will try. And then I had a reference to hang on to. The time... Well, listen, it's an important day, the day of your party. Well, as long asrablé said, substance

remains after a long time, the time we took to tell someone, I love you. Especially if we thought about it, if we thought about what we were doing, what we were saying and asking to do. So all this gravity ended up making the song gravity, and it's gravity all around. I'm going to ask you a question that I asked last summer to one of your friends, Richard Desjardins, last summer. I went to his lake near his lake, not far from Rwanda, in what he calls his camp.

It looks a bit like where we are now. I asked Richard Desjardins if he was eco-anxious. It's a new word we use to describe our relationship to what's happening with the planet. I'm surprised he says no. He did say yes, that the forest fires, in particular, which have ravaged part of the forest, obviously, have worried him a lot. Do you share this concern?

Yes, we are okay. He is worried about a lot of other things too. I know him, I know Richard, and I really appreciate what he does, and I really appreciate what he does and what he did. André, don't be a worry-maker. I found it extremely interesting that he went to France to show what he does and continue to do what he does. And Richard is coaxing, like all of us, I would say. I don't presume that everyone is coaxing. With... with our neighbor who doesn't seem to be at all.

Our big neighbor who doesn't seem at all to be anxious. And that, just that, should make us all anxious and worried. But everything is changing in the world. Him too. I don't mean that he will change, internally, but I mean that his people will take care of changing it. You are inhabited by hope, then? Yes, yes, yes. Without hope, we stop and we do nothing.

I hope... When I hope, sir, it's enormously. I hope a lot. There is no half measure in hope. No, no. It's like in faith. You have to believe in something, in a lot. A monk who was walking alone met a Jeanne who was called Athée. She said to the monk, Oh, I'm glad to meet you. You might say to your god that he doesn't exist. But why do you need an intermediary? Oh my God, it doesn't exist!

But why don't you take an intermediary? You can tell him yourself tonight. What do you think, Mr Vignon? I think I have to... I think I have to... Imagine, with the voice I had to believe in myself to make myself sound like I was singing. I made myself sound like the world believed it. and applauded them because of the words that were in the song and touched them, who went to look for them,

to look for their spirit. So that's how it is for all the composers, even the good ones, even those who have an extraordinary voice like Caroujo. It's for everyone. When I hear people who say, I gave my voice to such and such, that is to say, that they were voted for such and such,

I tell them everything. It's serious. Be careful. It's something you need to take care of. It's serious. It's serious. They're going to take it. Mr. Villot... Charles de Gaulle wrote one day that old age is a sacrifice.

Yes. Do you agree with him? I agree with his words because... He's not here today to defend himself. There's a lot to be said about it. But I must say that I always wonder, what is a shipwreck? He was captain of a big ship.

And he got old as captain. It's a big shipwreck. But it's a good word, because a shipwreck always means a ship. It means a journey, I'm always a crew, a captain, and sometimes passengers. In 1965, you wrote one of your most famous songs, called Les gens de mon pays. Do you think that the Quebeckers have changed since 1965? Yes. For the better?

A little bit. A little bit for the better. A little bit for the less. A little bit. A lot better. A lot for the better. A lot for the better. Because the Quebeckers have become more respectful of women, more respectful of the other. They have not lost all faith in themselves, and perhaps in God, that is the choice of each one. And maybe in God, that's everyone's choice. But you have to believe in yourself. Imagine how much you have to believe in yourself to present yourself in front of a crowd

and pretend that what we're going to say will be disturbed, touched, and they'll applaud. With the voice I had. Well, I wouldn't insist on that, but still. You're the one who insisted, not me. Yes, yes, I saw it. I love your voice. You let me insist. I let you go. You're the captain, to take your word back.

So, is that what you want from the Quebeckers? To believe in us? No, no, no. I'm proud to see Quebeckers believe in us, in themselves getting better and better, and believe in all kinds of things. When you believe, you must not be grumpy, you must not be afraid of your faith. You must believe a lot. Imagine the crowd that is taken to believe in the other, who is there, who pretends to sing, who pretends to dance. And I'm not saying anything for myself.

The crowd is there, and it adds faith to what is said. It's enormous, it's precious, it's a sacerdote. What do you wish for the Quebeckers? I wish that the Quebeckers continue to perfect themselves as they started. That is to say, to respect the other, whatever their sex, their color, their age. And I'm not talking about the elderly, but the children.

I'm talking about children, always before talking about the elderly. It's careful. Because logically they should be older. Yes, that's right. Yes! Mr. Vigneault, my walk, what we just did today, this show that you have offered, it's entitled Just Between You and Me. So I was wondering if you would agree, in conclusion, just for me, to read a poem that I chose,

taken from your most recent book, which was published a few years ago, Le chemin montant. Would that suit you? Have you ever seen a writer who refuses to read a bit of what he has written? It would have surprised me. It would have disappointed me too, but it would have surprised me first. If you find that, call me. I understand that it's a yes. To my little son, his name is Manny. Manny Villon.

He's the son of my son, the deber, the gardener, excuse me, Benjamin. It's the son of Benjamin, who is a gardener of a profession and a lover of trees. And it's by walking with him that one day in the forest I found this. It's that in the forest, silence is living knowledge. It finally leaves the word to the trees. To my little son, put the time on your side. It's a faithful old tool. The return of the irondelle does not speak of summer.

To the artisan relaxed, reflection is faithful. For the works of patience, il n'est point de temps perdu. On ne pose pas les mots avant l'étrave ou la quille. On n'offre pas de béquilles à qui marchent de bon pas. Le temps, c'est ce vieux miroir, témoin muet de nos fautes. And this old mirror, a witness to our faults, we imitate the little we can do, as we would do with a drawer. Art is born under its warmth,

it is the sun of silence. The soul is time that thinks, c'est le soleil du silence. L'âme, c'est du temps qui pense, l'espoir du fruit dans la fleur. Merci beaucoup, Monsieur Vigneault, de m'avoir offert de votre temps aujourd'hui. Je vous remercie d'avoir bien choisi le poème. C'est un honneur, Monsieur Vigneault. Merci. of your time today. I thank you for choosing the poem. It's an honor, Mr. Vigneault. Thank you. The happiness was for me. Just between you and me