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Understood: Artificial Intimacy
Céline Episode 1: Conquering Québec
00:37:50
<p>Céline Dion slept in a drawer as a baby born into a poor francophone Catholic family in Québec. At 12, she gets discovered in an office in Montreal, and she becomes a rising star in the insular constellation of Québec celebrity. But just as Céline is trying to break into English Canada, political tensions are running high in Québec. And some accuse her of selling out.</p>
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- [00:00]
Gavin Crawford
Hi, I'm Gavin Crawford, the host of Because News Canada's funniest news quiz. Every week, we make jokes out of the headlines with help from a panel of brilliant comedians like Alice Moran.
- [00:09]
Alice Moran
Hi there. I'm a sweet little Alberta dirtbag with very gentle takes. They call me light, sweet, and crude.
- [00:15]
Gavin Crawford
Half your job is making jokes, but the other half is scoring points. What subjects do you net the most points in?
- [00:21]
Alice Moran
Sports, but also space, because I went.
- [00:23]
Thomas LeBlanc
To space camp so much as a kid.
- [00:24]
Alice Moran
Not to brag.
- [00:25]
Gavin Crawford
That's the exact amount of knowledge you need for this show. Stay vaguely informed while in good company with me, listen to Because News, available wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:35]
Alice Moran
This is a CBC podcast. It was close to midnight in Paris. Oh, wow. People are coming down the stairs. And millions of people like me around the world were glued to the Olympic opening ceremonies on tv. That was a beautiful number. This is a party. It's a party. It was a spectacle with colored smoke and dancers swinging from scaffolding around the tram cathedral. Oh, I think she's. Oh, Celine is coming. I think Celine is coming. Oh, no. Okay, I've been watching for hours. They're zooming in on the logo. Is Celine there? Wondering if the rumors were true. Well, Celine performed. That's. That's what Everybody's asking. In 2022, Celine had been diagnosed with a rare neurological condition, and there were doubts about whether she could ever sing again. Oh, Celine will be at the Louvre and they're getting to Concorde. Where is this? They're giving us the whole damn tour. Or maybe she'll sing at the Arc de Triomphe, though. Then, through heavy drops of rain, the cameras pan to the Eiffel Tower. Holy Celine Dion. Wow. At first, she seemed so small, this tiny figure up on the glistening deck of the tour Efel. But she looked so confident in her white beaded gown and sounded so strong. This is incredible. It was surprisingly emotional. It had been years since we'd seen her like this. Her illness had kept her from the stage, and her absence felt like such a huge loss. This is a star whose career has spanned more than 40 years in French and English and reaches nearly every corner of the globe. My very first time in the Philippines. And yet, as a culture writer, I'm always struck by just how unlikely, how singular her path to superstardom really was. I'm Thomas LeBlanc. In this season of Understood, I want to piece together the cultural, political, and economic circumstances that helped manufacture Celine Dion, the pop icon.
- [03:19]
Thomas LeBlanc
I love to sing.
- [03:21]
Alice Moran
No kidding.
- [03:23]
Sonia Benezra
It was not by accident that things just sort of fell into place. As ubiquitous as Celine's glamorous success and popularity was, was this backlash and contempt for her.
- [03:36]
Erin Hurley
You're going to be Americanized, you're going to be Anglicized.
- [03:39]
Thomas LeBlanc
Well, I'm always going to stay a Francophone Quebec, er, all my life.
- [03:44]
Alice Moran
Could it happen again? Could Celine Dion happen again? But to understand all that, we'll have to go back to the beginning, because it all started very far away from the sparkling lights of Paris. This is celine Understood. Episode 1 Conquering Quebec I believe we are actually on Boulevard Silencion. I believe we are. I believe we're on Boulevard Salinzion in Chalamet. It's a hot Thursday morning in June. I'm driving around the town of Charlemagne, Quebec, with my producer, Crystal Duhaim. On Celine Dion Boulevard, you can see a dollarama, the famous Quebec chicken rotisserie Saint Hubert. That's Quebec culture. Charlemagne is about 30 minutes outside of Montreal. It's really cute, like older houses and nice little porches. It's where Celine grew up. She is talked about and sang about walking on the side of the street in Chalamang when she was a kid. So we can actually, we're on St. Denis here. I'm gonna show you Kristal. This is not Graceland. Growing up in Montreal in the 90s, Celine was just always around. I never knew a world without her. It all started when I was six years old. That year, for Christmas, my grandmother gave me a tape player. It came with two cassettes. One was of Celine's French album Dianchant Plaimandant and the other one was Unison, her first album in English. So in my family's living room, I'd dance to her pop tracks in English and then I'd sway along to her tender French ballads like Ziggy or Garcon Pacome, Les Autre A boy, not like the others. To me, as a Francophone kid, there was nothing weird about this. I loved English Celine as much as I loved French Celine.
- [06:00]
Thomas LeBlanc
Why do you say sometimes Celine and sometimes Celine?
- [06:05]
Alice Moran
I think in English, I just pronounce it the American way, Celine. So there's Celine and Celine, but in French we would say a hard D. Now, all these years with her in my life, I consider myself something of a Celine scholar. This is where Celine's family home was located. Oh, it's the fifth St. Jean. Yeah, that would be it. That would be the building where she went to school, crossing Danielle Street. She has a brother named Danielle Street. Can you imagine this is your elementary school and Celine Dion came here, and you can really tell they don't have extra budget. Even if Celine came here, the fence is broken. But these people have probably nothing to do with Celine Dion. We're right by their window.
- [06:53]
Thomas LeBlanc
Yeah.
- [06:53]
Reshma Sajani
Is it kind of creepy that we're just sitting here?
- [06:55]
Alice Moran
It's absolutely creepy. Looking around. Chalamang, a pole fitness gym, a tattoo shop, a Chinese restaurant called. I wonder if Celine, this bilingual superstar, really came to her identity so easily. Pizza Celine. After all, she comes from a place that's so idiosyncratic somehow. Quebec is the place that gave birth to Leonard Cohen and Cirque du Soleil. The cross street of the school is Trudeau, and obviously Pierre Trudeau was prime minister when Celine was young. Wow. There are so many layers here, so many tensions. Colonial histories, the grip of the Catholic Church, clashes between French and English, a powerful independence movement. And if you look hard enough, you can see how all these layers shape Celine. Shall we go to Starbucks?
- [07:54]
Thomas LeBlanc
What does Starbucks have to do Celine?
- [07:57]
Alice Moran
In a way, you can't escape Starbucks in the same way that you cannot escape Celine. So this is Celine singing with her family in a Radio Canada segment from 1983. She would have been about 15. Ghislaine Dion is one of Celine's big sisters. She goes by Gigi for short. She says when Celine was born, she was like Gigi's Poupee, her doll. Before Celine came along, there was Denise Clement, then Claudette, Liette, Michel, Louise, Jacques, Daniel, Gigi, Linda, Manon, and twins Paul and Pauline. At the head of this family, there was Ademard, the patriarch, and Therese or Maman Dion. It wasn't uncommon in the 40s, 50s and 60s for French Canadian families to have a dozen or so kids. My own dad was one of 11. Back then, the Catholic Church ran pretty much everything in Quebec, from education to healthcare, and priests mandated or at least heavily encouraged people to have large families. Still, after 13 kids, Maman Dion felt she'd had enough. At one point, she even went to her priest to ask if she might be permitted to stop having children, essentially to go on birth control. But the priest said no, it would go against God's will. Knowing now who Celine would become, it's hard to imagine that she was an accident. But when she was born in 1968, she was just one more mouth to feed in the Dion home.
- [10:36]
Reshma Sajani
You know, I mean, in the traditionalist French Canadian narrative of who French Canadians are, all in quotes, right? There's a sense of them being Ne pour un petit pain, right? Born for something very small, for the small role, for the little bread that they're not gonna go very far, and that's fine.
- [10:57]
Alice Moran
This is Erin Hurley. She's a professor at McGill University in Montreal. And she spent a lot of time thinking about the phenomenon of Celine Dion and how her story fits within Quebec's larger history.
- [11:09]
Reshma Sajani
This was part of the Catholic narrative. Just stay in your home with your many children, and that is enough. Just stay where you are and God will take care of you.
- [11:25]
Alice Moran
Gigi says her family was poor, but the kids were fed and their mom kept them dressed by sewing clothes for them. At times, kids were four to a room. The house was so packed that as a baby, Celine slept in the drawer of a dresser. The Dionnes didn't have much money, but they did, of course, have music.
- [11:47]
Reshma Sajani
They all play instruments, and they routinely sang and made music together as a family.
- [12:00]
Alice Moran
Their dad played the accordion. One of the brothers would dance a jig or la claquette.
- [12:11]
Reshma Sajani
And so it's no wonder that the youngest of this large family turns to music at a very young age.
- [12:20]
Alice Moran
In the 70s, the musical traditions in the Dion home carry over into a little piano bar that their dad buys. Le Vieux Bar.
- [12:29]
Thomas LeBlanc
What are you looking for?
- [12:31]
Alice Moran
Le Vieux Bar, or the old barrel. Like this is the equivalent of the bar where the Beatles started. This is the birthplace. It's at Le Vieux Barry that Celine, at the age of 8 or 9, first starts to sing publicly.
- [12:47]
Reshma Sajani
She's standing on the tables singing to the customers.
- [12:54]
Alice Moran
People start calling up Maman Dion to find out when La petite Celine will be singing next.
- [13:00]
Reshma Sajani
So in this very musical, traditional, large Quebec family, she is nonetheless identified as the one who's going places musically, as the one with a particularly special gift.
- [13:19]
Alice Moran
This is the first song Celine ever recorded, CE n' est que un rive. The lyrics are by Maman Dion and the music by Celine and her brother Jacques. She's around 12 here, but she doesn't sound like it. Celine sings about an enchanted garden with angels smiling down from heaven. The chorus goes, it was only a dream. It was only a dream but so beautiful that it was real. It's crazy to me every I. Goosebumps every time. It's wild to me. This is. This song is wild. It's one of the wildest moments of her life.
- [14:06]
Thomas LeBlanc
Really?
- [14:07]
Alice Moran
Yeah. It's like a premonition of everything.
- [14:11]
Reshma Sajani
So they write this song, and they bring it to Rene Angeline, who's a producer in Montreal.
- [14:21]
Alice Moran
Rene was kind of a big deal. He'd been the manager of two major Quebec music stars. The demo cassette gets them an invite to Rene's office.
- [14:36]
Reshma Sajani
And he hands her a pencil in the meeting and says, pretend this is your microphone and sing something for me. And she does. She belts it out and he signs her on the spot. So that's where the commercial musical story begins, is in Renee's office.
- [14:52]
Alice Moran
Rene, who's 39 at the time, starts dedicating all of his energy to 12 year old Celine Dion. He has big plans for her, plans that could only work in Quebec. In the 60s, when Celine was born, a societal shift had started taking place in Quebec. It was called La Revolution Tranquil, or the Quiet Revolution, because it wasn't a big, loud American style revolution. It was more gradual and, well, quiet. Quebecers wanted to shrug off the Catholic church, like, for example, they didn't want priests to sticking their nose into women's reproductive choices. And La Revolution Tranquil was also about standing up for French culture. While English is the majority language of Canada, French is very firmly the majority language in Quebec. This may seem obvious now, but back then it wasn't so simple.
- [16:04]
Reshma Sajani
There's a long history of the imposition of English as a public language, especially in. In Quebec, on French speaking people.
- [16:14]
Alice Moran
Aaron Hurley again the proffer Miguel.
- [16:17]
Reshma Sajani
Because the language of class power, of economic power, was English. So the power of English led to the need for a quiet revolution that Frenchifies. That was a Francise, right? That Frenchifies Quebec and anchors the right of speaking French to allow people to fully thrive in their mother tongue of French.
- [16:43]
Alice Moran
And this collective project of Frenchifying meant creating cultural infrastructures.
- [16:49]
Reshma Sajani
And so what this means is that Quebec at the provincial level invests heavily in culture. So for example, radio stations, TV stations and movies and musical production, again in French on Radio Canada, for example, right. On tv, on various television stations. So it's a space in which there are mechanisms for generating and then disseminating Quebecois French language voices.
- [17:21]
Alice Moran
And this space grows into an extensive network of local Quebecois talent and bolsters a small but thriving celebrity scene.
- [17:31]
Reshma Sajani
The Quebec star system, or vedeterien, as.
- [17:34]
Alice Moran
We say in French, the Quebec star system. And it's this niche cultural setting that nurtures Celine's emergence.
- [17:43]
Reshma Sajani
There are some really early moments in which we see how Celine Dion's career trajectory is really supported by these French language infrastructures. She comes out with her first album, La Voir du Bon Dieu, the voice of the good Lord, right?
- [18:02]
Alice Moran
It starts to play on the radio and then at the age of 13, on June 19, 1981, Celine makes her first television appearance.
- [18:15]
Reshma Sajani
She goes on Michel Jasmain's TV show. It's a talk show. It's a major cultural event. Everyone watches the Michel Jazzmain Show.
- [18:37]
Sonia Benezra
She came onto the scene, you know, this tall, thin type girl with this long hair and the thick eyebrows and wearing these outfits that, you know, it wasn't haute couture, let's just say. And she wasn't cool.
- [18:53]
Alice Moran
That's Sonia Benezra. Sonia is a music journalist and talk show host. Rene Angelil once called her the Oprah of Quebec.
- [19:01]
Sonia Benezra
You know, nobody really wants to be famous during those adolescent years, you know, when you're 13 and everything. If I show you pictures of me, it's like they're scary. I mean, you're changing, your face is changing. The features are sort of like, weird.
- [19:15]
Reshma Sajani
She has long, frizzy hair in the 80s, right? Like everyone else did. She has some crisscrossed teeth. There's some awkwardness, especially in those early moments when she's learning the trade. There are lots of points of familiarity or resemblance between a young sedan and everyone's cousin, right? Or everyone's younger sister. She gets adopted almost by Quebec society as well, as I say, as a kind of cousin or a little sister who's enormously talented. She had a certain innocence and joy in singing. Kind of lovely, almost naivete about the goodness in people and the joy in song and what music can do and how it connects us to something bigger.
- [20:18]
Alice Moran
The Michel Jasmin appearance is a total hit.
- [20:21]
Reshma Sajani
It reaches a whole new public and really solidifies the fact that she is becoming a Quebec star.
- [20:36]
Alice Moran
Soon. Rene's got her touring the province, singing at amusement parks. She's on tv, on the radio. She sings the national anthem at an Expo's baseball game. She drops out of high school to focus on singing full time.
- [20:57]
Thomas LeBlanc
My dream is to be international star.
- [21:03]
Alice Moran
There was negative press about her looks, but also about her ambition.
- [21:08]
Sonia Benezra
Not just ambition, it's the dream. I mean, this is a girl dreaming, not sure that it's going to happen, but daring to say it out loud. But somehow that just didn't. She's like Teflon. All of those comments sort of just almost pushed her further.
- [21:24]
Alice Moran
She puts out seven albums within four years. She's getting awards at home and in France, where at the age of 15, she's the first Canadian to get a gold record.
- [21:49]
Sonia Benezra
When did she sing for the Pope? What year was it?
- [21:51]
Alice Moran
84.
- [21:51]
Sonia Benezra
Okay, so 1984, when Celine gets to sing for the Pope. I think the entire world somehow hears her name. And she awakens everybody here in Quebec. I mean, obviously there are those that have already seen her on Michel Jasmin a few years ago, and you knew that this was an extraordinary talent. But if as soon as the Pope comes into it, then all the English press starts to cover it as well.
- [22:12]
Reshma Sajani
This is part of her sort of juvenile period, right? The tweens and teens in which she is almost exclusively clothed in white. There is this sense of innocence and purity which has to do with gender and Catholicism. And so she then becomes this kind of tribute to the Pope.
- [22:41]
Alice Moran
Celine is singing Une colombe. A colomb is a dove. And as Celine sings, the field at Montreal's Olympic stadium fills with hundreds of dancers, all in white.
- [22:55]
Sonia Benezra
It awakened my interest in this girl as well, who performed without looking nervous, with such assurance that it was really quite mind boggling. I. I mean, everybody commented on the majestic performance of this young girl who came out of nowhere. I mean, I don't care if you're religious or not. The Pope is so symbolic. It's a big deal. It symbolizes something bigger than us.
- [23:24]
Alice Moran
The performance for the Pope anoints Celine as a bright light in the Quebec star system. And Celine's dreams just keep getting bigger. Celine is taking a crash course in English with a private tutor because she wants to record in English.
- [23:41]
Erin Hurley
What language does he speak at home?
- [23:44]
Thomas LeBlanc
At home, Mr. Duvall. Speak French.
- [23:46]
Erin Hurley
Speaks.
- [23:47]
Alice Moran
She's already mastered several key phrases.
- [23:50]
Thomas LeBlanc
Hello, how are you? Nice to meet you.
- [23:52]
Alice Moran
With the help of Rene, she's about to cross over onto an even larger stage outside Quebec's borders.
- [24:01]
Thomas LeBlanc
Don't be hangry. I'm sorry, sir, my manager is not there now.
- [24:11]
Alice Moran
But first she'll need a makeover.
- [24:20]
Crystal Duhaime
Hey, I'm Reshma Sajani, founder of Girls who Code and Moms First. I consider myself a pretty successful adult woman. So why is it that in midlife, as I'm about to turn 50, I feel so stuck? Join me as I try to find the answer on my so called Midlife from Lemonada Media. I talk to experts and extraordinary guests about divorce, exercise, menopause, sex, drugs and more to understand what we're going through and how to make the most of it. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
- [24:50]
Sonia Benezra
I remember her walking into the studio with Renee Angelil and she was completely changed because they had kept her out of the spotlight for a couple because they really wanted to work the image and bring her back as a young, sexy singer.
- [25:06]
Alice Moran
Sonia Benezra. She's talking about the late 80s when she worked as a VJ at MusicPlus. It's where Sonia first met 19 year old Celine.
- [25:15]
Sonia Benezra
And she walked in with, I believe it was a miniskirt with her new little short haircut and the perfect teeth smile.
- [25:22]
Alice Moran
Gone are the virginal white dresses. And she's gotten dental surgery to correct the snaggle teeth that earned her the nickname Canine Dion or Canine Dion. Celine's makeover lined up with the release of her album incognito in 87. Out of this record came her dance pop single Lolita. It was a different musical style for Celine, a bit more like what Madonna was doing at the time. The song is about a teenage crush on an older man, something we'll later learn Celine is all too familiar with. You say I'm too young to live with a man I say I don't care I don't care, I don't care I love you. Oh my God, this will require so much Autotune. Back in 87, Celine's new album, the Makeover. It was all part of a broader attempt to shift her identity, taking her from child star to adult songstress and soon into a whole new market.
- [26:29]
Sonia Benezra
The first thing that people have to understand, especially if you're, you know, the Anglophone markets and the Francophone markets are like two worlds, you know, we say two solitudes. It's very different.
- [26:39]
Alice Moran
Celine Dion is the undisputed pop diva in Quebec since she was discovered at the age of 12.
- [26:46]
Chris Oak
She's only 21, but for years, Celine Dion has been a big star, a sellout in Quebec, a sensation in France.
- [26:53]
Thomas LeBlanc
I have to work hard because, you know, I'm very known here in Quebec and I'm not. I want to be known everywhere in the world, but I have to concentrate myself on Canada because I'm not known at all. You know, when I go to Toronto, Edmonton or Calgary or Vancouver, whatever, you know, I walk on the streets and nobody asked me my autograph.
- [27:13]
Chris Oak
After some English lessons and voice lessons, some dance lessons, her Quebec fans think she's ready for the rest of North America.
- [27:27]
Alice Moran
In 1990, Celine releases her first English language album called Unison. Listening to Unison, I am brought right back to the cassette I got as a kid. There's synthesizers, basses being slapped, epic guitar solos, even elements of house music. And this one song on the album, it still holds up. Where Does My Heart Beat Now? It's a slow stepping emotional ballad with a dramatic buildup and early 90s electric guitar riffs. But it was not just the album's music that was getting noticed on the COVID of Unison. The French accent on Celine's name is gone.
- [28:25]
Reshma Sajani
So when Celine makes this shift to singing in English, there are really mixed responses in Quebec. So in that moment, English Canada is discovering Celine Dion. Quebec has known silention since she was 12, right? So there's a kind of possessiveness, which I don't mean in a negative way, but possessiveness and pride in this homegrown girl who pulled herself up by her bootstraps kind of thing. Coming from hardscrabble beginnings and really making it. But there's a concern in Quebec that's expressed about a kind of betrayal, a sense of her getting too big for her britches. Are we not enough? Is it not big enough to be a star?
- [29:12]
Sonia Benezra
Here.
- [29:18]
Alice Moran
The comedy troupe Rocket Belzoret puts out a song that seems to be about I want to pung. Pung is Quebecois slang. It basically means to sell out. I do not want to speak in my tongue. I just want the pun.
- [29:37]
Sonia Benezra
There's an expression in Quebec, tu est ne' est pour un petit pain, which means you're born for something small. So if you dare to dream too big. Some people thought, like, how dare she? Like she comes from Charlemagne. I mean, it's like, you know, why? Why her? That kind of a thing, that mentality?
- [29:55]
Reshma Sajani
What is that balance between loyalty, fidelity to one's roots and the desire and the commercial need to expand markets, to expand horizons.
- [30:17]
Alice Moran
So far as Quebec is concerned, that question has been settled. 1990. But I'm ready. I'm ready to. Just after Celine's debut English record drops, when the French accent on her name is struck from her album cover, Quebec is delivered a blow. The Prime Minister and the provincial premiers trying to find a way to pass the Meech Lake Accord, a move to revise the Canadian constitution had been in the works. A revision that would officially recognize Quebec as a culturally distinct society, its own special thing within Canada. But then it all unraveled.
- [30:55]
Reshma Sajani
How are you feeling tonight?
- [30:57]
Thomas LeBlanc
I must say I feel betrayed.
- [30:59]
Alice Moran
Further stoking the already passionate independence movement, the country was at risk of being torn apart. And tensions between English and French are flaring.
- [31:10]
Sonia Benezra
I'm pretty sad for the country and for Quebec.
- [31:15]
Alice Moran
That same year, on a Sunday night In October, a 22 year old Celine finds herself caught up in the middle of these political forces at a gala in Montreal.
- [31:26]
Sonia Benezra
I mean, it's huge. You dress to the ninth, you know, you showed up on the red carpet. I mean, it was like A mini Hollywood version.
- [31:35]
Alice Moran
The Addisque gala is one of Quebec's biggest music events of the year. Basically Quebec's Grammys people watched.
- [31:43]
Sonia Benezra
If you knew La Disque was on, you were not watching anything else.
- [31:46]
Alice Moran
Sonia was at the Azisk that year. Unison had come out a few months earlier and the album has sold really well.
- [31:53]
Sonia Benezra
And she's nominated in Quebec for best Anglophone Artist.
- [31:59]
Alice Moran
Anglophone Artist of the year.
- [32:02]
Sonia Benezra
This was a big deal. The fact that she was nominated in that category was also a little bit of a dig, you know, here she goes singing in English, the enemy language, you know, that sort of a thing.
- [32:14]
Alice Moran
Sonias may be making assumptions here, but it's hard to believe that the Adzisk establishment, essentially the gatekeepers of the Quebec music industry, would not have known what they were doing when they put Celine in the Anglophone category. As Quebec's sovereignty movement is so dialed up at the time, so is the protectiveness around Francophone culture. And it felt like Celin was getting put in her place, was being told not to pung. But Celine and Rene couldn't just not show up to the biggest event of the year either.
- [32:46]
Sonia Benezra
So they did not want to ruffle feathers. You know, you have to play the game.
- [32:53]
Alice Moran
And so on the night of the gala, when they announced the winner of Anglophone Artist of the Year, the camera finds Celine sitting in the audience with Rene. He puts his head down for a moment and Celin looks over at him as if to say, oh mon dieu, here we go. It's not the look of someone who has just won an award. Celine pauses before standing up, then walks to the stage. She's wearing a body hugging black miniskirt and a matching blazer with shoulder pads. A guy in a suit extends the golden statuette towards her, but she waves it off and she takes the microphone.
- [33:38]
Sonia Benezra
She was defiant, she was not smiling.
- [33:42]
Alice Moran
And then Celine says she can't accept the award.
- [33:49]
Sonia Benezra
People were shocked.
- [33:55]
Alice Moran
It's not because she's not proud of her English album, she says, in fact, she's very proud of her album. She goes on to thank the record company for supporting her pursuits across the world as a Quebecois artist. And then comes the kicker. And I thank the fans because they understood that I am not an Anglophone artist.
- [34:31]
Sonia Benezra
Nobody was going to tell her who she is. You cannot define me. I know who I am.
- [34:37]
Alice Moran
She could be Celine. And Celine.
- [34:42]
Thomas LeBlanc
They just disqualified me of the 45 categories because I sang in English. I was singled out because I sang in English and I just didn't think it was fair.
- [34:54]
Erin Hurley
Do you ever worry of the fact that at this particular time, when people are very sensitive about Anglophone or Francophone, that your francophone audience, your original audience who supported you in Quebec and so on, will think that you betrayed them? Because you're becoming an English speaking star now and you're going to be Americanized, you're going to be Anglicized.
- [35:13]
Thomas LeBlanc
Well, I'm always going to stay a francophone Quebecer all my life. I'm proud of that. But I'm francophone. I was able to sing in English. Today.
- [35:26]
Alice Moran
The day after the Addisc Awards aired, public reaction is mixed. In one letter to the Montreal Gazette, an English newspaper, a reader accuses Celine of pulling a publicity stunt and says, just one little piece of advice for don't bite the hand that feeds you, or you might find yourself without any English money to feed you in the future. In the same paper, Jacques Pariseau, the leader of Quebec's Independence Party, he says, I thought it was for a girl like that, quite something to say. I was impressed and I wrote her a small note to say so. At the Addisque gala. The very next year, the name of the award is changed to Quebec Artist Most Illustrious in a language other than French. Still, one gets the sense that Celine, as a woman trying to be a star to all of Canada, English and French, was never going to please everyone.
- [36:30]
Erin Hurley
You said I am Quebecois.
- [36:32]
Thomas LeBlanc
I know.
- [36:32]
Erin Hurley
And the problem is, are Quebecers only French speaking? Are they, Celine? Are Quebecers only French?
- [36:39]
Thomas LeBlanc
No, absolutely not.
- [36:40]
Erin Hurley
I'm glad to hear you say that.
- [36:43]
Thomas LeBlanc
There's a small C right here. There's not a capital C. There's not a capital D here. Oh, my God, it's terrible. It doesn't change me. It doesn't change my personality. I think it's a great album and it's not because there's not an accent.
- [36:56]
Alice Moran
But one thing's for sure, people were talking about Celine Dion in two different languages. Now.
- [37:04]
Chris Oak
A true Quebecer, he says.
- [37:07]
Alice Moran
With.
- [37:08]
Chris Oak
Lots of ambition, American ambition.
- [37:15]
Alice Moran
Celine was ready to cross over into the us, but she had a secret about all those love songs she was singing. And her manager, Renee, feared this secret could stop her career in its tracks.
- [37:28]
Sonia Benezra
I'll never forget the moment when they had to come out on stage where the album launch was taking place, or when an audience, people standing around and he was petrified. I had to literally push him, push him on the stage.
- [37:43]
Alice Moran
That's next time on Celine. Understood. The show was produced by Crystal Duhaime and Zoe Tennant. With showrunner Imogen Burchard. Sound design by Crystal Duhame and Julia Whitman. Roshni Nair is our coordinating producer. Executive producers are Chris oak and Nick McCabe. Locos in order of appearance, Audio from the International Olympic Committee, CBC and Radio Canada archives the YouTube channels of Thumbhead and powered by Dion, NBC Super Rhetoile, Cezanne, Tevea, Sony Music Entertainment, Rocket, belzoret, audiogram & l' association quebecois de l' Industrie du disc du spectacle et de la Video. Celine Understood is a co production of CBC Podcasts and CBC News. You can follow Understood and listen to previous seasons on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. For more CBC Podcasts, go to CBC CA Podcasts.