Simon Chabot
Journalism

Michel Lacombe, who only worked three days a week at Radio Canada, expires this spring and has been agreed not to renew. “It’s a decision encouraged by management,” the host says in an interview, but realizes, however, that at the age of 77, he hasn’t seen himself cling to his mic indefinitely. “I leave with a smirk,” he says.

“I have enjoyed working to promote people who deserve it, such as dancer Rodney Desire or the new FTA co-director Martin Denniwald. I will miss it very much,” said Michel Lacombe, speaking of some of his latest guests. 2017 Commission of Inquiry to protect the confidentiality of press sources, for the last time. 21on May 25.

With retirement approaching, Michel Lacombe is calm and grateful to have been able to lead a long and fruitful career primarily within the public broadcaster. “Radio Canada is the only place where you can do this kind of big thing that you’ve been able to do, both public affairs programs, where you have time to dig deep and build a reputation that you can approach anyone without being told you can’t.”

rich journey

Michel Lacombe began his career in journalism in the summer of 1966 in Chicoutimi, “one of the cities of Ceremony On time.” The following summer, at the Expo, he joined Radio Canada in Montreal, having insisted on several occasions with his boss that he had hired him “to see him often.” In the early 1970s, she made her debut on Channel 10 (Télé-Métropole). “It was very impressive,” says the journalist who said he learned a lot during this news-rich period regarding major strikes and the October crisis in particular.

He participated in the Professional Union of Young Journalists in Quebec, then returned to Radio Canada, where he was a prominent Quebec Parliamentary Correspondent for a public affairs program. Present When Rene Levsk’s first government was elected in 1976. Then he worked in international journalism at Radio Canada Television the pointin the early 1980s, before returning to the radio for a morning interview with the newsmakers.

In the early ’90s, he made his mark as host of the mid-day public affairs program, which was specially called Back – 15. “We did a major overhaul of the public affairs programs there, with a partial recall, and I had a lot of fun hosting it,” he recalls.

He then briefly took charge of Joël Le Bigot in the animation for the morning show on the broadcaster’s Montreal antenna, before being shown by management, who feared audience drop. “It’s an adventure that didn’t go so well,” laughs Michelle Lacombe today.

Returning to public affairs, he subsequently assumed the presidency ofopen on saturday And from Don’t believe everything they saywhose distribution ended in 2019. Since then, Michel Lacombe has maintained himself in the animation for 21 In addition to the soap operas dedicated specifically to the Quiet Revolution, Obert Aquin or the invention of radio. In 2020, he and his wife, Natalie Petrovsky, also hosted a summer program on generational struggles. ok boomer.