CULTURAL CHAMPION
Monique Simard’s determination
The expression goes: If you are the smartest person in the room, you should change rooms.
If that were true, Monique Simard, president and executive director of the Société de développement des entreprises culturelles du Québec, would lead a lonely life.
She doesn’t. Instead, she oversees every major cultural issue in Quebec to fulfil SODEC’s mandate to champion cultural enterprises across the province, as well as promoting those enterprises in the rest of Canada and around the world.
If people have heard about SODEC, it’s probably connected to feature films. SODEC doesn’t only invest in the making of those films, it works with distributors and exhibitors, young filmmakers, festivals, markets and sales.
It also oversees the Quebec publishing industry; visual artists, artisans and art galleries; music and variety entertainment; heritage protection for buildings; museums and tourist sites. That rings the cash register up to a $75-million annual operating budget.
In her fourth year in the provincially appointed job, Simard is an anomaly. Long associated with the Parti Québécois, she serves under a Liberal government and nobody seems in a hurry for a change. Why? Because she is very, very good at what she does.
Before taking up her position at SODEC, Simard spent five years as director of French-language programming at the National Film Board of Canada, where she was instrumental in introducing a new digital orientation, something she has carried with her to SODEC.
She began her professional career with the Confédération des syndicats nationaux as a negotiator, and after a brief stint with another union, went back to the CSN in 1979. She stayed until 1991, eventually becoming first vice-president.
She twice ran as a candidate for the Parti Québécois, losing the first time then winning the second in 1998. Alas, it was not meant to be. Confusion over a municipal vote became a source of embarrassment for both Simard and the party. She resigned and quit politics; their loss, culture’s gain.
We met when we were both elected to the board of the Cinémathèque québécoise. I knew who she was, of course — that “union rabble-rouser separatist” as she was known in the anglo media in those days. She appeared to know everyone in the room.
She stayed, which in retrospect was a good sign.
I soon discovered the other layers: mother, grandmother, sister, friend and all of that normal stuff, but also a producer, partnered with her late husband Marcel Simard. Her street cred goes all the way back to the film Wow, directed by Claude Jutra, in which an 18-year-old Simard is seen, however briefly, toplessly enjoying some trampoline time. She has a poster of the film in her office.
The following year she took over as chair of the Cinémathèque board. That’s when I saw Simard’s real strengths.
Running a board meeting is an art; running it well is a gift. There is a kind of person who can look at an agenda, reflect on what needs to get done, give the participants a quick read and determine the temperature. After that, she can also announce what time the meeting will end — all of that before the agenda has even been approved.
That might be thought of as rude or presumptuous. In Simard’s case, it is a remarkable display of a specific skill set developed over some 40 years in situations rife with negotiations. To the manner born, indeed.
At 67, Simard continues to be a form of energy unto herself. She is as determined as ever to see sexual equality in all facets of the arts and elsewhere. She spends enormous amounts of time taking her views of the digital world and its opportunities, her much beloved documentaries and animation, to markets and festivals — wherever she can find an audience. Not surprisingly, she was honoured at this year’s Hot Docs festival in Toronto by being named winner of the 2017 Doc Mogul prize.
So artists, if you are in a room with Monique Simard and she leaves, don’t wonder about your intelligence. Remember, she has many other rooms she needs to look in on.