One chased stars at the end of the cosmos, the other chased her around. They both disappeared a few hours apart.
Hubert Reeves was born in Léry on the shores of Lake Saint-Louis and died last Friday in Paris. The next day in Montreal it was Guy Latraverse’s turn to give up the ghost. The two men had little in common other than their shared search for stars, one for the countless stars that make up our universe, the other for the rarer stars to which we owe the Big Bang of Quebec songs and music.
For all sorts of reasons, including deplorable academic rivalries, Hubert Reeves spent most of his career in France. There he also began his extraordinary career as a science popularizer with the publication of Patience dans l’azur, a book he wrote together with his friend Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond, a physicist like himself. According to an interview with Apostrophes, the Bernard Pivot show that we still miss sold a million copies.
COMPLICITY WITH THE STARS
I didn’t have the opportunity to meet Hubert Reeves, but I often saw and heard him on the radio and television. My friend Jean-Marc Carpentier, also a science popularist, has talked to me about Reeves so often that I feel like I knew him personally.
Hubert Reeves spoke of the stars in a complicit and loving tone, the way one speaks of very close friends whom one loves unconditionally. Guy Latraverse also spoke about Robert Charlebois, Yvon Deschamps, Diane Dufresne and all the artists he loved unconditionally.
Hubert Reeves and Guy Latraverse spoke about their stars with great modesty. As if they both owed them everything and the stars owed them nothing. But without Chroniques du ciel et de la vie, without the film “Stars are also born”, without the illustrated album “Dust of Stars”, without the great NFB documentary “Storyteller of Stars” and without so many other writings and “About Hubert Reeves,” what would I do Do you know the stars that I never tire of looking at on a clear evening?
Would the popular songs and music of Quebec have transcended our borders without Guy Latraverse’s flair, without his relentlessness and his boldness, without his contempt for risk, which is indeed the hallmark of great entrepreneurs?
Such disregard for risk!
To produce a show like Magic Rose you had to completely disregard risk. On August 16, 1984, I was among the 55,000 admirers of Diane Dufresne who brought something pink – in my case a scarf – to applaud the singer and, above all, to do that crazy latraverse that had the immense challenge of to fill the Olympic Stadium.
A staunch sovereigntist, Guy never gave a speech. His Rally for National Independence galas, his Osstidcho, his SuperFrancoFête and those of ADISQ (which he co-founded), as well as the dozens of shows by artists from Quebec and France that reek of independence and self-affirmation, spoke loud and clear for him.
Guy sought neither honors nor attention, but he was aware of his extraordinary contribution to our culture. The little grin he gave when he was congratulated said more than words. Hubert Reeves also had the same little smile when we praised him! Another striking similarity…
