TRIBUTE TO DION’S HUSBAND SLAMMED
Unusually high honour for music manager
MONTREAL• As Quebec prepares to lower flags to half-mast Friday and stage a “national funeral” for showbusiness impresario René Angélil — best known as Celine Dion’s husband and manager — some in the province are questioning the criteria for bestowing such honours.
After Angélil, 73, died of cancer Jan. 14 in Las Vegas, Premier Philippe Couillard wasted no time in offering the family one of Quebec’s highest honours. A national funeral is one step down from the state funerals reserved for former premiers.
“Quebecers will have an opportunity to pay tribute to a man who marked our nation’s cultural landscape,” Couillard said in announcing the funeral, to be held at Montreal’s Notre- Dame Basilica. Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre called Angélil “a monument of the entertainment world.”
Angélil’s official death notice called him “an unprecedented visionary” and “a Pygmalion of modern times” who transformed Dion into an international star. But it is the source of his fame — managing another’s career, albeit incredibly successfully — that has left some puzzled about his addition to a pantheon that includes nationalist poet Gaston Miron, painter Jean-Paul Riopelle and hockey legends Maurice Richard and Jean Béliveau.
Sylvain Bouchard, a host at Quebec City’s FM93, said Tuesday that at the end of the day, Angélil was a manager. “Has anywhere else in the world ever done that for the manager of an artist?” he asked. “Is there another people other than Quebec that gave a national funeral to a manager?” He said it would be as if not just Richard and Béliveau were given national funerals but their coaches as well.
Others have questioned Angélil’s credentials as a true Québécois hero. “While there is no denying that the impresario left a mark on the media universe of the last decades, I believe that we should contest the vision of culture that he leaves us,” poet and literature professor Dominique Corneillier wrote Wednesday in Le Devoir. “Installed in Las Vegas for several years, in the kingdom of kitsch and of money, Céline Dion is an American artist.”
Raymond Cloutier, artistic director of the Théatre Outremont, wrote on Facebook that he is troubled by the symbolism of a national funeral for Angélil. “The celebration of bling being, of the use of talent for purely commercial ends. Success synonymous with genius,” he wrote. “I am worried for my culture when the state no longer makes a distinction between being popular and being meaningful.”
Part of the problem is that there are no established criteria for Quebec’s national funerals, and compared with most jurisdictions, Quebec is relatively generous in offering the honour. Angélil will become the 10th Quebecer — all of them men — to have a national funeral since 1996, when the first one was held for Miron. ( That is on top of the nine former premiers and ministers given state funerals.)
Federally, state funerals are typically reserved for prime ministers, governors general and sitting members of cabinet. Former prime minister Stephen Harper was accused of breaking with custom when he honoured NDP Leader Jack Layton in 2011 and former finance minister Jim Flaherty in 2014 with state funerals.
Olivier Bauer, a professor of theology at the Université de Lausanne who until this year taught at Université de Montréal, said Quebec’s approach to state funerals is part of a nation-building exercise.
“The fact that it has been broadened beyond politicians is a positive sign in the sense that we are recognizing that great people are not just politicians,” he said. “You can be an artist and play an important role and merit the recognition of a province.”
Angélil is the first businessman to be so honoured, which might explain some of the criticism from the cultural class — but Bauer said it shows Quebec is recognizing a new kind of builder. That is not to say the choice to honour Angélil is particularly radical. Though he was the child of Syrian and Lebanese i mmigrants, Angélil was born in Quebec, raised as a francophone and his funeral will be in a Catholic church.
Bauer said that honouring Angélil could also pay political dividends: “I think the government of Quebec gets more visibility from holding a national funeral.”
While his status as a builder of Quebec may be up for debate, in one regard Angélil is undeniably a pioneer: He will be the first Quebecer to have his national funeral followed by a commemorative event at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The family has announced the “celebration of life” for Feb. 3 in the casino’s Colosseum theatre, where Dion performs.