Roy Dupuis was on the late-night show La Semaine des 4 Julies, and he once again confided about the violence he had witnessed growing up and his possibly-failed hockey career.
“Have you always loved hockey, played hockey when you were young, was it always important in your life?” asked host Julie Snyder.
“Yes, it was very important in my life. I started skating when I was three if I didn’t go back to town, so if we didn’t split up with my dad I could have a career. We got back into town my dad couldn’t be there so the authority was… my hair grew and then the discipline took a little bit of the edge! Nevertheless, I continued to play ice hockey here and at some point I realized that this wasn’t my world,” admitted Roy Dupuis.
Moderator Julie Snyder also referred to the statement Dupuis had made to “Everyone talks about his father’s violence” some time ago.
Because of what he went through, he also chose to play Christophe in Tout la vie and À cœur beating and to show violent people that it’s important to seek help.
“As a kid growing up in a violent family, you initially think that’s normal. We don’t realize that our family is different, when did you realize that: Ayoye, what we’re going through is not normal?” Julie asked sensitively, since she said she also suffered from violence in her youth.
“My father hitting me and hitting my brother and then my sister, there’s something that I found normal until a certain age of 5, 6, 7 years (…) where I realized that he wasn’t doing something true, he was hitting my mom. In my child’s mind, my mother had had a father. For me it was normal to be hit because he is my father. I needed correction, I needed someone to teach me how to live (…) I didn’t understand why my father hit my mother and that was the most traumatic thing,” Roy confided, visibly touched by his memories.
“How did you manage to stop the violence? When you have 5, 6, 7, how do you break the cycle of violence?” asks Julie.
“I won’t go into too much detail, but the only time I won was because my mother had the upper hand in the chicanes. It was she who emptied her office onto my father, my father was hiding behind the bed. Then she finally left the room and I found myself in front of my father. This is the first time I say to him: dad, you have no right to hit mom, he’s not your child. After that, he never touched me again, in front of the children,” explains the actor in a touching moment.
Roy Dupuis also states that the violence really ended when the family fled from his father, the children and his mother fled.
So he later decided, with the possible desire to have a family, to do a psychoanalysis to make sure that he would not become violent because he had children, but also because he had drug and alcohol problems at the time, he reveals.
Roy Dupuis also mentions that he forgave his father, which created another defining moment as we saw an equally emotional Julie Snyder about her own past child abuse situation.
“It is good to forgive someone who does not apologize (…) I congratulate you on sharing this wisdom. I come from a family where violence was present, I did a psychoanalysis and I don’t have your wisdom yet,” Julie started, visibly emotional.
An evening at La Semaine des 4 Julie that we will never forget.