In a powerful book in which she criticizes both the media and political methods, her former leader and her former party, the ex-Solidarity MP for Taschenreau, Catherine Dorion, recounts her difficult time in politics, which she emerged from due to a post-traumatic disorder Shock is eradicated.
After her departure from the “political jungle,” Taschenreau’s deputy had to take a six-month break from 2018 to 2022 to regain her footing. She had to untie the knot of negative emotions that went so far as to cause her to have anxiety attacks and vomit.
A psychologist helped her a lot. “He told me: What you are describing are symptoms of post-traumatic shock,” she says during an interview that happened to take place on the day the CAQ abandoned the Quebec tram, news that did not surprise her but disappointed her. As a member of parliament, she fought passionately for this project and against the third party.
Today the ex-elect is doing much better. She took time for herself and with her three daughters, including the youngest. She was born with a heart defect in the last year of her term and is now doing very well.
But above all, wrote Catherine Dorion, it was another extremely effective form of therapy. “I brought order into myself, I wanted to use the intensity of what I experienced to understand it, to analyze it, to take the time.”
Difficult relations with the GND
PHOTO PROVIDED BY LUX EDITOR
It’s all there, in this work entitled Les têtes brûlées: Notebooks of Punk Hope, out on Monday from Lux Éditeur. Through this literary work, the former MP and artist speaks about the years she spent in the “formatted bubble” of Parliament, where long parliamentary rituals take place that, in her opinion, are all too often useless.
She describes that she suffered much more than one can imagine. “I needed freedom of expression without being afraid,” she will often say in our interviews, an idea that lies at the core of her advocacy.
Catherine Dorion tells of her difficult relationship with chef Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, whose methods she believes involve controlling and centralizing games behind the scenes. She criticizes him for letting the party fall into the old political parties.
“From the depths of our trenches, one thing is now clear: we don’t particularly like each other,” she wrote of the man who had little appreciation for her manners and the visibility she enjoyed.
For example, when Law 21 was passed, GND criticized him for posting a video on social networks. This is not his first warning. “You get more attention than the speakers, that’s not normal,” he told her. “As they say in the theater: I’m on stage. This is inappropriate. I need to have less influence,” she says.
The artist emphasized that his goal was not to hit Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois in the thigh muscles. “I believe in the intelligence of the reader, who can see the nuances,” she proclaims. Still, she wasn’t really impressed or inspired by her former boss.
Media criticism
Catherine Dorion also takes a very hard look at the media, which she says cannot be criticized without being attacked and demolished.
Some believe that the media attention has served her well, others criticize that she has diverted attention from her party. She replies that she wanted to use her artistic expertise, like lawyers and others entering politics, to say things forcefully that she had not heard from politicians in the National Assembly.
His fight: the fight against inequalities and multiple rulers, the excessively invasive world of work and the hectic pace of life in our society.
“I never imagined that this battle would be fought over things that I find as banal as clothes,” she explains. I never wanted to create a national movement around laundry. I believed him when I was told that there was no real dress code for women in politics. I come from such an open world.”
The caged bird
On one of Catherine Dorion’s final days in Parliament, a CAQ member placed a quote from Stephen King on her desk. In my opinion it sums up the shock the artist experienced when he became involved in politics.
“Some birds just aren’t meant to be kept in cages, that’s all. Their feathers are too colorful, their song too free, too beautiful. So we release them or they fly away when we open the cage to feed them. A part of you, the part that knew it was wrong to lock her up in the beginning, is happy, but the place you live in is even sadder and emptier after she leaves.
Despite everything, Catherine Dorion doesn’t regret her time in politics because she learned a lot. She certainly left behind some naivety, not all of it, she explains, but she emerged from it stronger and with the conviction that she had done her best.
In February, the artist will be on stage again and perform a piece about democracy, a topic that will continue to concern her.
