Living next door to a legend requires Montreal-style tact

For six years, I lived next door to a Quebec legend.

Of course, Benoît Girard was in his twilight by the time we were neighbours. His heyday as an actor had been decades earlier when he starred in such madein-Quebec television series as Le survenant, Grujot et Délicat, Monsieur le ministre and Lance et compte.

In a career that spanned more than 50 years, he was a fixture of Quebec film and stage productions, a sex symbol and a talented character actor. He did drama. He did comedy.

He was a snowy-haired gentleman with sharp cheekbones when I moved in to the small apartment building we shared in the Plateau-Mont-Royal. As the years progressed, his proud bearing acquired a stoop and his patrician features a pallor. But he never lost that dazzling smile.

I was sad to hear he died this past weekend at the age of 85. For Girard was a rare breed who is becoming an endangered species. He was among the pioneers of Quebec film, theatre and television, who came of age as francophone culture flourished around the Quiet Revolution, then rose to fame in the flurry of homegrown productions.

These aging vedettes are now reaching a delicate age where they are beginning to disappear. News of Girard’s passing was quickly followed by the announcement Janine Sutto had died. Another icon of Quebec culture, Sutto’s career dated back to the 1950s. She, too, interpreted hundreds of roles that reflected the life and times of Quebec back to Quebecers, from Belles histoires des pays d’en haut to Kamouraska.

The departure of Sutto, 95, was marked by a moment of silence at the opening of city council Tuesday morning, a tribute from Mayor Denis Coderre and Montreal’s flag lowered to half mast.

The lights are dimming on a generation of stars that helped forge the modern Quebec identity through art — on stage and on screen. Among those whose flames have been extinguished in recent years are actors like Rita Lafontaine, Monique Joly, Louise Rémy, René Caron and André Montmorency; dramatists like Marcel Dubé, directors and producers like Denis Héroux, Jean Bissonnette, André Melançon and Gilles Carle. These may not be household names in both solitudes, but in French-speaking Quebec they are giants.

I won’t pretend I knew Monsieur Girard or his oeuvre well. Of his hundreds of film, stage and television credits, his role in the 2005 film Maurice Richard is the one I was most familiar with.

As neighbours we exchanged countless pleasantries, bantered about the weather and admired the front garden. We never talked

about his craft or his fame. I’m not even sure he knew I knew who he was. But I did.

When we first bought our place, the vendor told us our new neighbour was a big deal. She also confided he’d moved to the area, west of St-Laurent Blvd., so he wouldn’t be recognized on the street. He just wanted to live a quiet ordinary existence even though he was a most extraordinary talent.

As Guy Fournier noted in Le Journal de Montréal, Girard died as he lived: “discreetly.” “Remaining discreet when you’ve had a career like his is a feat in the bling-bling world of show business,” he marvelled.

So after doing what journalists do and looking him up, I remained discreet, too.

That’s part of the charm of Quebec’s star system. Many of the old school vedettes remained rooted in the place where they grew. They are revered and yet accessible. They are a part of us and yet inhabit a realm apart.

That’s the magic of Montreal, too. It’s a chill city where residents take brushes with greatness in stride. Leonard Cohen could breakfast on the Main and members of Arcade Fire can sip espresso in Mile End undisturbed.

So when you live next to legends, you respect their privacy.

Monsieur Girard was a proud man who commanded such respect but never demanded it. (All us neighbours referred to him as Monsieur. Never did we think of calling him Benoît.)

In his latter years, we worried about him as the stairs became more difficult. But the real blow came when the love of his life, fellow actress Monique Joly, died in 2015.

The most intimate conversation I ever had with him was on this terrible loss. As we crossed paths in the hallway, I remarked that I hadn’t seen him in a while and asked how he was. That’s when he told me he’d been having a tough time, because his wife had died.

I offered my condolences and wished him well, but it was clear the light in him was flickering, too.

Adieu, Monsieur Girard.

The lights are dimming on a generation of stars that helped forge the modern Quebec identity through art.