The Inside Story In which your intrepid editor records the behind the scenes wheelings and dealings of Bay Crossings This month: how a cousin does it. Tabernacle!
The tipster: this man owns a mechanical shop near the broken water main, the subject of our big story. He’s the one who called TVA with news that it had been left unrepaired by the City for three weeks.
Published: September, 2001
I am in Montreal to attend a family reunion. A first cousin is a cameraman at a big television station here and I ask him to let me tag after him one day at work. I’m curious about the contrast between producing television news and a small community newspaper like Bay Crossings.
My cousin’s name is Jacques Northon. He is a Québécois, a label that carries the approximate emotional and social baggage for Canadians that African-American does for Americans.
The background is this: Louis XIV unwisely got himself into the Seven Year’s War. England, not a party to the conflict, nonetheless cheerfully exploited the situation by seizing French possessions in Quebec and the Caribbean while Louis had his hands full with Frederick of Prussia.
The mistake cost the Sun King and France what very likely today would be a vast French-speaking nation occupying all of what is now the heartland United States, stretching from Quebec down through the Great Lakes and all the way down to New Orleans. It gives pause to consider that, but for the caprice of one man, we Californians would be speaking Spanish today, and the English-speaking United States, should one even exist, would be limited to the eastern seaboard.
The French settlers of Quebec paid the most terrible price of Louis’ error: occupation by the English and abandonment by their mother country. The Québécois, though a conquered people, resist English hegemony to this day. Over 5 million people in Canada consider French their first and, in many cases, only language. Separatist groups have long been active, and a referendum calling for Quebec’s secession from Canada failed by a whisker a few years back.
My cousin Jacques works for the TVA Network, Canada’s largest French-speaking television station. Jacques had been working on the French-Canadian equivalent of 60 Minutes, but found it too stressful and, for the time being anyway, has returned to working for the evening news program.
I’ve only gotten to know Jacques recently. My mother is Québécois but married my English-Canadian father and together they emigrated to the United States where, I, the first American-born member of either side of my family, was born. My father, a zealous technocrat, read an Ivy League study suggesting that learning two languages impeded learning (the theory has since been debunked). Thus, my three brothers and I were forbidden to learn French and, as a result, we had little to do with our French-Canadian relatives.
A year or so ago I resolved to learn French and reconnect with my Montreal roots. My mother agreed to be my tutor and I have since spent Sunday afternoons in frustrating and infantalizing labor, writing out basic sentences and struggling, so far unsuccessfully, to learn how to roll my "r’s".
I started corresponding with Jacques and other cousins and have visited once before this trip. Jacques has three boys, and they find me fascinating because I am from exotic California. They agree to help me learn French and my mystique is soon much diminished because they find my accent debilitatingly hilarious. My painstakingly acquired mini-phrases, which so impressed my wife when I tried them out on her, leave my young cousins incapacitated by laughter, slapping their thighs with tears streaming down their cheeks.
Things go better when I ask to be taught swear words. French-Canada is fervently Roman-Catholic, so the curses are almost all sacrilegious in nature. By far the most common, used seemingly to punctuate both the start and the end of every sentence in conversation, is tabernacle, or tabernacle in English, which Webster’s defines as the portable sanctuary in which the Jews carried the Ark of the Covenant through the desert.
Jacques’ kids are boundlessly enthusiastic about teaching me swear words, and work diligently to get my pronunciation of tabernacle just right. They assure me that perfection here is key to being regarded a true Québécois. The trick is to start out low with the ta, plateau with a slightly higher-toned ber and finish brightly by ejaculating the nac loud and proud. The young generation is proud enough of me, their protégé, to parade me through Old Montreal, elbowing me in the side at propitious moments as my cue to yell out "tabernacle"! They grade me on my effectiveness at startling passerbys.
Jacques picks me up at my hotel and we head to the station for the start of his 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM shift. We park in the basement of TVA’s headquarters, a large building in downtown Montreal bedecked with glossy advertisements featuring station personalities. We head to the Assignment Editor’s desk to find out what stories we’ll be given.
It’s a Monday, and not a busy news day apparently because all there is to cover is a broken water main. Southern Montreal is enduring a drought and water rationing has been imposed, yet it appears that municipal officials have allowed a broken water main to go unrepaired for three weeks. Our task is to find residents with browned out lawns to express indignation on camera.
Jacques is paired with reporter Normand Rheaume. Normand had been covering national politics in Ottawa until recently. His transfer to the nightly news does not sit well with him and he openly expresses indignation about going from covering prime ministers to covering water leaks.
We clamber into the news truck and after a drive across town arrive in the affected neighborhood. We cruise the streets with Normand on the lookout for someone watering their lawn.
TVA’s newscast is modeled on CNN’s Headline News and is known by the acronym "LCC". It stands for Le Canal Nouvelles ("The News Channel"). Normand snortingly derides it as "Low Cost News" while scanning for his lawn-waterer.
We spot one, and Jacques pulls the van over and gets his camera ready. The lawn-waterer, pole axed with excitement at the prospect of being on TV, stares at us while water pools at his feet. The interview begins. It is marvelous how Normand, so sour and deflated just moments ago, is now a picture of command and authority, his posture ramrod straight, chin jutted out. It’s as if when the camera was turned on it blew him up like a balloon.
Though I am working hard to learn French, I have no idea what they’re saying. Maybe if they swore some I’d do better. This much I get; for the lawn-waterer, this is his big moment and he’s not about to blow it. I get the feeling he’d say whatever he thought Normand wanted him to say.
After the interview is done Jacques takes a few close-up shots of a browned-out lawn. I ask Jacques and Normand if people ever refuse to be interviewed. Yes, they do; about one in five will refuse to talk on camera, they say.
What concerns him most as a cameraman? Protecting his camera, Jacques answers. The camera is worth over $40,000 — $18,000 for the lens alone. Not long ago a TVA crew was robbed of their equipment, purportedly by Latin American pornographers creatively financing their productions.
We find our way to the water main break and take some more footage and then it’s back to TVA headquarters. Jacques hands Normand the videocassette, and Normand leaves us, grumbling about having to be editor, producer and reporter all in one.
Jacques and I now cruise the streets of downtown Montreal in the news van waiting for Jacques’ pager to go off with news of our next assignment. We buy lunch at a Couche-Tards (the Québécois 7-11) and eat in the van while parked at the corner of Montagne and Notre Dame streets, where home plate was to have been for the as-it-happened-not-to-be new downtown ballpark for the Montreal Expos. Too bad: home plate would have had a magnificent view of the Montreal skyline.
Jacques, a fervent Expos fan, is wistful when recounting the Expos’ dimming prospects. The team, now owned by an American, is winning few games, experiencing dreadful attendance and seems likely to be soon moved out of town.
A change of view and subject seems in order, so we get the van going and renew cruising downtown Montreal. We pass by the corner of Peel and St. Catherine’s Streets, where, says Jacques, one can find the "most people per square foot of any spot in Canada; the Times Square of Montreal". Beautiful wrought iron spiral staircases spill off the second stories of even the most humble apartment blocks.
We go down St. Laurent Street, the dividing line between English-speaking and French-speaking Montreal. Someone with Montreal license plates asks Jacques directions. They do so in English, unable to pose the question in French. Although French speakers outnumber English speakers by more than five to one, it’s quite possible to spend your entire life in Montreal without learning French and, according to Jacques, many do just that.
Does that make you indignant, I ask?
He shrugs philosophically and, puckering his lips, makes a noise that sounds – I’m sorry I can’t think of a better way of describing it – like a small fart. It’s a common French-Canadian tick, used frequently to punctuate conversation, usually to indicate, "Well, what can you do?"
"We were always told "Tu es né pour un petit pain", Jacques answers. The phrase, literally translates as "You were born for the small slice of bread", meaning you were born to be a second-class citizen; deal with it.
Do you resent Americans, I ask?
"Not really. I mean, sometimes we call them les maudits americains ("the accursed Americans"). But we have little in common with English Canadians and much in common with the Americans. The car I love (a Plymouth convertible) is American, the music we listen to is American, the movies we watch are American. For us, the English Canadians hardly exist".
Jacque’s pager goes off. He’s been assigned the weather girl shot. It’s the universally familiar moment in every local newscast, the one where the weatherperson is at some scenic spot to give the forecast. I wonder how Jacques can do it since our truck is not equipped with any satellite or microwave equipment. It turns out that the station maintains some twenty-five permanently installed plugs at frequently recurring locations.
He hopes we’ll be sent to Old Montreal, a beautiful, historic waterfront district, but as it happens. we’re assigned to the parking lot behind the station. Jacques tells me the weathergirl shot is coveted by cameramen because it’s easy. "Idiotic adolescents" who get in the picture and give the finger while on the air are a problem. More recently, and even more irksome to Jacques, are yuppies who position themselves so as to get in the live picture, flip open their cell phones when the broadcast begins, and call friends and family to announce that they’re on TV.
We have time to kill before the weathergirl shot, so we go across the street for a bière en fût (draft beer). While waiting for the bières to arrive, Jacques starts talking about Le Mondial. I interrupt to ask, what’s Le Mondial?
For the first time, Jacques loses patience with me. "You don’t know what Le Mondial is?" He slaps his forehead and exclaims "Calis Americain!". It’s another Church-derived expletive, literally "Calice American" but having the meaning of "unbelievably ignorant American". I learn that Le Mondial is, of course, the World Cup soccer tournament. Good-natured Jacques soon regains his equanimity, though, and I redeem myself somewhat by asking to be taken to a souvenir shop so as to buy a Montreal Canadians (the beloved hometown hockey team) sweatshirt.
It’s time for the weathergirl shot. The weathergirl is Colette Provencher, and she’s an old pro having done the weather at TVA for 8 years. I ask her if she ever gets nervous. "Jamais", she says. "J’aime mon public, et mon public m’aime". (I love my public and they love me).
I ask her about her work and she shows me a half-sheet of copy paper, on which is scribbled the forecast in shorthand. She tells me proudly that she memorizes this each day so as to be spontaneous while on air. She wants to know what something is in English, and after some fumbling back and forth I finally get what it is and tell her: partly sunny.
I ask Colette if I can take a gag photograph of me standing behind her like one of the jerky adolescents. She graciously agrees, but only after I promise not to give the finger. Another reporter appears: the setup will be used to film the top story of the day as well. A studio assistant is on hand and I ask what the top story is. He has no idea.
The top-story reporter, surprisingly young and disheveled, stands before the camera, crouching first to place his cellular phone on the sidewalk in front of him. He is looking straight into the camera now, talking with someone in the control room, oblivious to anything but his unseen audience. The reporter has no worries about his cell phone; he knows the crowd of gawkers that have assembled behind him will never dare to invade the sacred space of live TV.
The news broadcast begins imperceptibly. I am watching the top-story reporter and assume he is still bantering with the control room. The tip-off is that Colette has taken the chewing gum from her mouth, sticking it on a parking meter just out of camera view.
The top-story reporter finishes and during the interregnum between his story and the weather report, we watch our broken water main story in the viewer of Jacques’ camera. It’s strange, to say the least: I get the sense of looking at a mirror with a mirror.
Colette is in position now, her moment arrives, she performs faultlessly. Within two minutes of finishing she is into her modest sedan and on her way. She lives in the suburbs with her two teenage children and will back in time for the 11:00 broadcast.
"That’s it", says Jacques. "C’est fini".
Jacques gets a close-up of the water main break. Normand is off getting reactions from mechanics.
Normand rises to the occasion. Normand Rheaume, until recently a national political correspondent for TVA, is crushed with disappointment at his diminished status. Yet when the camera turns on, so does Normand. It’s as if someone has blown him up like a balloon.
