One day Magali Picard couldn’t recognize herself in a photo. Literally. After the death of her daughter, the new president of the FTQ was in jeopardy. On the eve of a possible unlimited general strike in the public sector, the trade unionist tells of her path marked by several tragedies.
On February 21, 2004, little Gabrielle, 10 years old, was dancing in the living room. Despite a heart defect from birth (tetralogy of Fallot), the young red-haired girl had received excellent news six weeks earlier: her heart was beating like clockwork.
After years of worry, Magali Picard also suffered. Open heart surgery at age 4 was a success. Follow-up examinations would now be staggered. Normal life could begin.
The shock was even greater when the young girl collapsed.
Gabrielle, daughter of Magali Picard.
“I let myself go,” says the woman who took over as head of the Quebec Federation of Workers last January. I gained 100 pounds. I got up with medicine, I lived on medicine. It was terrible.
The meetings with the psychologist took place in pajamas three times a week for a year.
As Magali Picard delves back into her memories, she becomes emotional, tears welling up in her eyes. “Well, let’s see, Magali, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be 20 in February,” she whispers to herself.
Important meeting
Ultimately, it was an unexpected gift from her brother, a painting from his daughter Gabrielle by Quebec artist Juan Cristobal Pinochet, that forced the unionist to take control of herself.
The painter, who usually declines such requests, wanted to meet the mother after living with the young girl’s painting in his studio for a month. “We had an extraordinary time. We had dinner with him, his partner and his children,” says Ms Picard.
But when the evening’s photos reached her, Magali Picard was worried. “I asked: Who is that? To be honest, I didn’t recognize the miserable person I saw in the photo,” she admits.
The next day, she asked her doctor to start weaning and went to the gym.
Two years later she gave birth to her son Vincent.
Without ever having considered suicide, Magali Picard admits that she was at a crossroads at the time: “It was: I stop or I continue,” she admits.
- Listen to the interview with Magali Picard on Yasmine Abdelfadel’s show via QUB radio :
Lots of tests
However, the hardships were far from over. Her ex-partner is now confined to a wheelchair after an accident while playing hockey in a garage league. Because he is a paraplegic, his condition requires three hours of care per day.
Her current partner’s son, who suffers from schizophrenia, killed a man with a baseball bat in September 2020. He had stopped taking his medication. At the end of his trial, Johan MacLennan was found not criminally guilty and is currently in a psychiatric hospital.
In April 2022, Ms Picard will suffer a heart attack at the age of 51, three months before she takes office as president of the FTQ. The atrial fibrillation has nothing to do with her daughter’s problems, but she now has to take two medications morning and evening.
Magali Picard explains her resilience to these hardships with the support of her family. “I have three brothers and a sister who are so present in my life. […] When someone is in pain, we are all in pain. “If one person is happy, we are all happy,” she says.
When Gabrielle died, the siblings “lived with us that year.” “They took turns, they brought food… It must be because of them that I gained so much weight!” says Magali Picard, laughing.
First woman and first indigenous person
Pink jacket, indigenous art and children’s drawings: the atmosphere in Magali Picard’s office clashes with the traditional image of the FTQ.
It seems a long time ago, the time of Henri Massé, when the thugs of the FTQ-Construction sawed down the door of the place to, manu militari, drive away young anti-capitalist demonstrators. Or even that of Michel Arsenault, implicated in the revelations about his stay on board Tony Accurso’s boat.
Magali Picard, the first woman and first Indigenous person to lead the FTQ, speaks about the climate crisis, intersectional struggles, social income and reconciliation with First Nations.
Prime Minister François Legault is doing “terrible harm” to minorities by refusing to acknowledge systemic racism, believes the woman who grew up on the Wendake reserve in suburban Quebec.
Magali Picard, President of the FTQ, in her office in Montreal, Friday October 20, 2023. TOMA ICZKOVITS
The CAQ leader is “playing the innocent,” she said, in linking this concept to a racist system in Quebec rather than unconscious bias. “We will say whatever we want, we can agree or disagree, I am sure he knows the difference. “He could be such an extraordinary ambassador if he agreed to take on this mandate,” says Magali Picard.
people wiped out
Her own grandfather, she says, had to refuse to continue his medical studies despite his academic success because he was forced to give up his Huron identity to gain access to higher education. “He ended up working as a harvester and taxi driver,” she says.
His father hid his Indigenous heritage when he applied to the Transportation Commission. “Friends told him: Don’t say you’re Indian because they wouldn’t hire you,” she says.
Even today, despite the progress their aunts have made, their grandchildren will lose their status as members of the First Nations because their son’s father is non-Native. “There is still genocide in Native American law,” she says.
Important symbols
Despite everything, the unionist is pleased that members of the First Nations are gradually filling important positions. Manitoba just elected a premier from the Ojibwe Nation, while the Legault government appointed an Innu minister, Kateri Champagne Jourdain.
She sees this as the result of an awareness following the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, coupled with acknowledgment of past abuses by Ottawa and the Catholic Church. “It makes me feel good. Because for a long time we were seen as a bundle of problems, as people who had problems with drug addiction and didn’t want to get out of it,” she emphasizes.
“This recognition means we are not being fair [vus comme] a lot of trouble,” she concludes.
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