Read the Franco-Ontarian Day

This week's initiative, spearheaded by Lucie Hotte, Professor and Director of the Centre de recherche en civilisation canadienne-française (CRCCF), is kicked off with her recommandation of Andrée Christensen's Depuis toujours, j'entendais la mer. Originally from Ottawa, Christensen has over twenty titles and ten awards to her name.

"This is a complex novel, a choral novel, which is built from a layering of semantics, which answer and call to each other", says the professor. "Through a subtle play of mirrors, Christensen proposes a particular reflection on life and death, which is not that of the wheel or the eternal rebirth, but rather that of the very acceptance of our mortality. This reflection, which is far from macabre, gives the work all its strength and the strength of the writing makes the novel a masterpiece."

On Tuesday, part-time professor Monia Brahim recommended Capharnaüm by Nancy Vickers, an author based in Ottawa. "From the very first pages, the reader explores the world of objects, objects that take up more and more space until they replace human beings. The reader witnesses a slow descent into hell, the decline of the main character, engulfed by the objects he loved so much," she shares.

Next, Dominique Bourque, a professor who holds a joint appointment in both the Département de français and the Institute of Feminist and Gender Studies, recommended a book by one of her dear colleagues, Les porteuses d'Afrique ! by Angèle Bassolé-Ouédraogo. "In powerful poetry, Bassolé-Ouédraogo celebrates the unsung African women whose beautiful names she lists," says Professor Bourque proudly. "This is a dazzling tribute to these historical figures who have nurtured and protected the peoples of Africa from century to century, who have kept them alive through hardship."

Angèle Bassolé-Ouédraogo completed her doctorate in Literature in our department, and is now a researcher at the Institute of Women's Studies. She published Les Porteuses d'Afrique ! in 2008 (L'Interligne) which was a finalist for the Ottawa Book Prize.

Joël Beddows, Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre and Special Advisor on Francophonie in the Faculty of Arts, also wished to participate in the activity. He recommended several titles that made an impact on him.

His first recommendation is Le testament du couturier by Michel Ouellette, one of our former part-time professors who also completed his bachelor's, master's and doctorate degrees in our department. "This work moved me because of its ability to move the issue of identity into a completely invented context, even a science fiction world," he says of Ouellette's work.

Afterwards, he also recommends reading Sarah Migneron's À tu et à moi: "This play allowed me to understand - if only a little - that a woman is never simply a character invented by a man." Migneron holds a Master's degree in Creative Writing from the University of Ottawa.

Finally, he shares Patrice Desbiens' title, L'Homme Invisible-The Invisible Man. According to him, the collection allowed him "to identify the extent to which bilingual existence is a search for meaning."

Former department director and full professor Maxime Prévost also recommended Patrice Desbiens' book, which he describes as the Franco-Ontarian work that has made the greatest impression on him. "First of all, I admire his audacity to place himself so resolutely, from the very title, in a line that could be described as mythological (The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells and Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison). While Ellison represented the reality of African-Americans in the 1950s, Desbiens uses an extremely original literary form to illustrate that of Franco-Ontarians: free-form poems in both official languages. But be warned: the English version is not a simple translation of the French text, as Desbiens subtly gives voice to the dual nature of his French and English experience."

Yesterday, to end this week of celebration on a high note, a few graduate students also shared their favorite books.

PhD student Myriam Legault-Beauregard recommended the poetry book Projet Terre, published in 2021 by David Editions, under the direction of Michel Thérien and Nelson Charest, one of our associate professors. "Many of the poets who contributed to it are from or live in Ontario," she begins. "I really enjoyed the diversity of words and styles. I also watched the performance that resulted from this project - it was absolutely beautiful to hear the authors recite their engaging and moving texts."

The recommendation of another doctoral student, Eve Bilodeau, is Compost-partum by Éric Charlebois, a graduate of the University of Ottawa in French Literature. "In this poetic collection, the author exposes his fears related to fatherhood in a language that perfectly combines medical lexicon and the subjective reality of childhood and childbirth. Tinged with humor, it is the richness of his distance from lyricism that allows him to properly absorb the reflection on his relationship to others."

Finally, L'homme invisible / The Invisible Man by Patrice Desbiens seems to be the most popular book. "It's an essential work of Franco-Ontarian literature. It represents the complex quest for identity in French Ontario," confirms Kayla Levert, a master's student who also suggests reading it.