Quebec loses one of its most famous intellectual figures. Journalist and polemicist Denise Bombardier has died at the age of 82.
The Journal de Montréal, where she has written a column for several years, announced that Denise Bombardier died Tuesday morning “as a result of complications arising from medical examinations.”
During her career she has worked with many media outlets on both sides of the Atlantic, including Le Devoir and Radio-Canada, where she was a headliner in the 70’s and 80’s. Public service broadcasters were then the prerogative of men, but ‘Madame B’, as she was known in the media, was able to make a name for herself on the public service broadcaster’s show, most notably as a co-host of the show Le Point.
She has also published numerous books, both essays and novels. Let’s mention “A childhood with holy water”, “The dictionary of Quebec lovers” or even “The enigmatic Celine Dion”, a sociological portrait of the most popular Quebec singer in the world, which she followed during her world tour and for which she wrote a song in 2007.
Born into a working-class family in Villeray County, Denise Bombardier was one of the first generation of Quebecers to have access to higher education. In 1974 she completed her doctorate in sociology at the prestigious Sorbonne in Paris. A Francophile, huntress of Joual and Franglais, she was certainly the best-known Quebec intellectual in France. In 1993, François Mitterrand even awarded him the Legion of Honour.
Three years earlier, she had sparked controversy in France when, on the set of the show Apostrophe, she answered author Gabriel Matzneff, a notorious pedophile who bragged about his conquests in his novels. This cathodic transition, which has become a cult, will bring him the ignominy of a section of the French left of the time, which still clung to the liberal ideals of May ’68.
Denise Bombardier, a right-leaning woman, certainly a conservative, never stopped fighting what she believed to be the excesses of progressivism, earning her some controversy. In her columns published in Le Journal de Montréal, she regularly dealt with gender theory or wokism.
Denise Bombardier signed her latest column last May. She leaves behind many loved ones, including her son, the author Guillaume Sylvestre.