Guy Latraverse, one of the great builders of Quebec’s recording and entertainment industries, died Saturday evening after a long illness. He had been in the hospital for a month. The famous impresario and producer was 84 years old. The news was confirmed to La Presse on Sunday afternoon by his daughter Zoé.
Posted at 4:41 p.m.
Guy Latraverse was born on July 5, 1939 in Chicoutimi. He was the eldest of a family of four children and was a year older than his sister Louise, actress, writer and director, thanks to whom he entered the world of art.
Since college, he has been involved in organizing sporting and cultural activities and took his first steps as a professional manager when, at the turn of the year, Claude Léveillée, his sister’s lover at the time, asked him to take care of his accounting. 1960. Quickly recruited by Guy Latraverse, an artist who had little interest in numbers, gained further ground in 1962 when, after leading a negotiation in favor of the author of Frédéric, he declared that he would henceforth be his impresario.
PHOTO REAL ST-JEAN, LA PRESSE ARCHIVE
Guy Latraverse.
“Impresario. “I didn’t know exactly what the word meant,” reveals producer Guy Latraverse, 50 years of Quebec showbiz, a biographical book published in 2013. To my knowledge, no one had that title in Montreal. »
The “Father of Showbiz”
Guy Latraverse is at the forefront of the cultural revival that has animated Quebec since the 1960s: in addition to Claude Léveillée, for whom he organizes Quebec tours, he notably collaborates with Pierre Calvé, Pauline Julien, Jacques Blanchet, Jean-Pierre Ferland and Will the man behind the extraordinary career of Yvon Deschamps since the 1970s. He also expanded his activities to Europe and organized the visits of artists such as Guy Béart, Léo Ferré, Petula Clark and Charles Aznavour to Quebec.
PHOTO JEAN GOUPIL, LA PRESSE ARCHIVE
Yvon Deschamps and Guy Latraverse in 1985.
We don’t say lightly that Guy Latraverse is the “Father of Quebec Showbiz.” He was one of its great builders, alongside Gilles Talbot and Gérard Thibault. Apart from being involved in almost all the major shows of the 1970s (L’Osstidcho, I saw the wolf, the fox, the lion, 1 by 5, those of Offenbach in the Oratorio of Saint-Joseph, etc.), he is one of the founders of ADISQ, co-founder of the Francos and was, in one way or another, behind all the televised galas designed to reward the artists of Quebec culture, from music to cinema through theater and humor.
Ideas of greatness
His journey is marked by great ideas. He convinced Claude Léveillée to design the Place des Arts in 1964, when no local artist had yet appeared alone as a headliner. He is the man behind Yvon Deschamps’ 100 Nights at the Théâtre Maisonneuve in 1977. He is also the fearless producer who presented Diane Dufresne at the Forum in 1980 – the first local artist to perform solo there – and the one who created his Pink Magic Show made possible four years later in the Olympic Stadium. No other local artist has dared to do something like this since.
PHOTO DENIS COURVILLE, LA PRESSE ARCHIVE
Diane Dufresne at the Forum in 1980.
However, his career was marked by several failures. Some of his projects (particularly the presentation of the show Jaune ou… by Jean-Pierre Ferland at the Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier) drove him to bankruptcy. Three times instead of once. He always got over it and established himself sometimes in the field of records (Kébec Disques) or television (Sogestalt, Productions Samedi de Rire) and always in entertainment.
Paradoxically, Guy Latraverse drew his courage and energy from an illness that also deeply affected him: he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in the mid-1980s. “There wasn’t much that stood in my way in this job. “I was a good bipolar person who was really successful,” he said with a laugh during an interview with La Presse in 2013. “This illness allowed me to do things that allowed Churchill, Roosevelt and Napoleon, all bipolar, to do business.” they would never have done that. »
social commitment
He was also one of the first Quebec figures to speak publicly about bipolarity and advocate for mental health. Guy Latraverse is actually one of the founders of an association now called Revivre, which supports people suffering from anxiety, depression and bipolar. His social commitment was also shown through charity shows such as “Tous unis contre le sida” and “In Concert with Saguenay”, both of which took place in 1996.
A year before founding the FrancoFolies de Montréal (later simply called Francos) with Alain Simard, Guy Latraverse received the Félix Honor in 1988. A reward that particularly touched him. “That evening was one of the greatest moments of my life, because this tribute came from my colleagues, people who had appreciated what I had done for Quebec’s entertainment industry, our business,” he says in the biographical book, published with the help of The former author was La Presse journalist Daniel Lemay.
PHOTO NINON PEDNAULT, LA PRESSE ARCHIVE
Daniel Lemay and Guy Latraverse
His career has been marked by a number of prizes and awards presented by both public authorities and associations of television, music and entertainment professionals. His protagonist was recognized a second time by ADISQ, which awarded him a special Félix tribute in 2013 for his 50 years of work in secret to promote local artists and culture.
PHOTO HUGO-SEBASTIEN AUBERT, THE PRESS
Tribute to Guy Latraverse at the 2013 ADISQ Gala