This week, in the world of media and celebrities, we witnessed, 48 hours apart, a difficult departure and a resounding arrival.
The departure is the departure of Denis Levsk, who withdrew after 16 years on the air.
Came the arrival of Janic Fournier, the big winner of the TV competition Canada Got Talent.
As Denis Lévesque dims the lights for the last time, Jeanick Fournier steps into the spotlight. One gets off the show business, and the other rides on it.
Oddly enough, they are both from Roberval, in Saguené-lac-Saint-Jean!
And I have a great admiration for them.
I got a talent for Sagweni
Many things have been said about Denis Lévesque, but we haven’t stressed enough how privileged he was in the interview. It takes a lot of skill, and a lot of listening to give a voice, as he did, to ordinary people who have gone through extraordinary things.
We are not interviewing a simple citizen who has just gone through a terrible tragedy or an unusual situation … and a seasoned politician benefits from an army of communications advisers.
Dennis’ strength has always been to find the right word, and formula, to help the most awkward guests express themselves by listening to them with the same respect as if they were big stars.
He developed an accent, style, and style imbued with humanity, without laughing at or despising his guests. Even at the height of the epidemic, he was able to extend his microphone to guests on both sides of the fence, so that they could defend the legitimacy of their point of view.
Dennis Levesque is much more than a cartoon of him by some… who I suspect have never seen his show.
archive photo
Janic Fournier
The queen sings the queen
In his penultimate show, Denis interviewed Jannick Fournier, the big winner of Canadian talent. We felt he was especially proud of this Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean citizen.
Janic Fournier’s triumph is exactly the kind of story that Dennis loves to tell. A beneficiary worker at a palliative care center, who sometimes accompanies a dying person with Celine Dion singing to her, who has adopted two children with Down syndrome, who participates in a talent contest and … who wins.
A woman lives in a modest house of 4½ years, but one evening earns $150,000, and her first idea is to move to a bigger house so that her children have their own room.
This woman touches me deeply. And you know what makes me most proud of it? When she won, I thanked her in French first. “Thank you to the people of Saguenay – Lac-Saint-Jean, Quebec, Canada, for your support. Thank you to my team, thank you to my family, thank you to my beloved, thank you to my friends, thank you to my wonderful children.”
We heard the beautiful dialect of Saguenay – Lac-Saint-Jean on television in English in Canada.
For Janek, the career began. She won by singing the Queen’s anthem, show must go on.
Even if it’s Dennis Levsk, that’s where “The Show” stops.
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